


The Rush of the Sea

by rednights



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (they're in love), AND KISS!!!!!, Anxiety Attacks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Ghost Drifting, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, OKAY THOSE TAGS MAKE IT SOUND SCARY, Recovery, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Slight Canon Divergence, Slow Burn, and, but they're gonna get better!!!, it's also mostly, saving the world is traumatizing, vacation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-08-20 09:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20225500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rednights/pseuds/rednights
Summary: After the clock stops, Newt goes on the vacation he’s always said he wanted, and quickly remembers how much he hates to be alone. Thankfully, Hermann interprets a friendlyyou should come!as an invitation, and together they navigate a sea that is much less inviting after what they’ve seen come out of it, and relearn how to live.or: I wanted to write a summer beach fic and this is what happened.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The canon divergence is that they didn't write letters (tragic, I KNOW) or have a terrible first meeting. They first met at HK Shatterdome in 2020. Otherwise, all is the same.

For nine years, Newt has been telling anyone who will listen—so, namely Hermann—that after they, after _he_, stops the apocalypse, he’s going on vacation. 

He said it constantly. Every time he had to stay up all night working on a report, every time he nearly fell asleep standing up and faceplanted into his samples, every time he cracked his back loud enough to be heard clear across the room. “_God, after this, I’m retiring to Bermuda_,” he would say. “_I’m taking a sabbatical. I’m getting the first flight to the Atlantic and I’m not coming back for months._” He’d say, “_After I sign some autographs, of course. It’ll have to be someplace remote. Everyone will recognize me.”_

Hermann had always rolled his eyes, and Newt isn’t sure he’d ever really believed it himself. Not that he wouldn’t be the one who would find the way to stop the Kaiju once and for all, but that it would _end_. That it would ever, ever end. At least in his lifetime. 

But it did. It had. And he had even actually helped make it happen. But then the end of it all was so chaotic, and so disastrous, and they’d lost—they’d lost so many lives that even the celebration was heavy with it. And the aftermath had been brutal, between post-drift medical examinations and trying to write reports on everything that had happened and figuring out the new chain of command and attending memorial services and clean-up projects. Two weeks, Newt spent just as endlessly swamped with work and stress and exhaustion as he had been before they stopped the clock. 

And then, blessedly, a moment of silence. 

Newt’s mind is rarely quiet, and _never_ silent. It’s always going and going and going, and he has medication he could take for that, but he hasn’t been able to, not in years, not while he needs his brain to be working as fast as possible. Always so much to think about, problems to fix, lives to save. And now people to mourn, and disasters to minimize. And Newt hasn’t really been sleeping, mind going too fast for that, the backs of his eyelids tattooed with monsters rising up from the sea, people dying in front of his eyes. And Hermann’s been in his head, too. Since the drift. They don’t really talk about it—they don’t talk about it at _all_, honestly—but Newt feels him, sometimes. Vague thoughts and feelings that he doesn’t think are his own. Mostly pain. More exhaustion. That endless need to work, work, work. 

But there’s a moment. They’re in the lab, and Newt has finished his final report on his experiences with the drift, on what he saw and felt from Mutavore’s brain fragment and Otachi’s baby. He’s finished his report on the hive mind, and the Precursors. He’s gathered as many samples as he can from the remains of the last of the Kaiju. He’s found them all places to be stored. He’s done everything that needs to be done _now right now_. There’s no clock ticking on the wall. 

Newt looks up from his lab table and realizes he’s been putting things away. He’s been cleaning it off, without even really thinking about it. He looks across the lab, and he sees Hermann wiping down his chalkboards. No one is walking into the lab to demand answers. No one is begging them to work harder, work longer, just to give them a better chance at survival. 

It’s silent. 

“I’m going on vacation,” Newt says, before he’s even fully decided it himself. 

Hermann turns to look at him, bewildered. “What?”

“I’m done here,” Newt says, firmer this time. “I’m going on vacation. The Breach is closed, and the Kaiju are gone, no one’s about to die, and I’m done here. I’m out. I’m going to the Bahamas or something.”

Hermann stares at him, like he doesn’t quite understand what Newt is saying. “You can’t just leave, Newton,” he says. “There—there is work to do, samples to process, research to complete—”

“I don’t care,” Newt says. “I _don’t_ care. For nine fucking years, there has been more work to do, always so much fucking work to do, and now we did the thing we came here to do, and I know there’s still stuff left, but I’m taking a _goddamned_ vacation. Because I _deserve it_.” 

Newt can see Hermann’s jaw working from across the lab. “You’re just going to _leave_—” 

“I’m coming back! God, I’m not retiring. I just. I need a _break_, Hermann.” Newt takes a deep breath, hopes Hermann can’t see how shaky it is from his side of the room as he runs his hands through his hair. “I have been working my ass off since I was in my fucking _twenties_, and like, obviously I don’t regret it, because I saved the fucking _world_. But I haven’t had a vacation in nine years. And I fucking _deserve one_.” 

Hermann blinks at him, slow and silent. 

Newt swallows thickly. “And so do you!” he says quickly, voice echoing off the walls of their lab. “You should come too, dude. I’m gonna go to the beach. On the Atlantic, obviously. Less toxic pollution. Or maybe I’ll go to a lake! Somewhere warm. Southern hemisphere or something. You should come, it’s gonna be— It’s gonna be great.”

Hermann frowns at him deeply. “I have _work_ to do, Newton.”

Newt’s heart sinks a little, in a very familiar way. But he plasters a grin on his face, waves him away. “Well, fine, your call dude. You’ll be missing out. It’s just gonna be me, and the beach, and pina coladas in my hand—once I learn how to make them—and. The fucking sun on my face. That’s still there, right? It’s been a fucking minute since I saw it.”

Hermann is quiet, watching him, his wide mouth twisted. “For...for how long?”

Newt licks his lips, stares back at him. He tries, for a second, to reach out with his mind, feel what Hermann is feeling, because Newt can’t read it in his face. He reaches across the ghost drift, not quite sure if that’s morally acceptable, and gets—nothing. He can’t seem to control it at all. It was more constant at the very beginning, a compounding effect on their fear and exhaustion, and then more sporadic, and now it just seems random. But it fails him, now. His shoulders slump, defeated. “For as long as I want, dude,” he says, cracking a grin he hopes doesn’t looks as forced as it feels. “And if anyone tries to stop me, I’ll tell them to fuck right off. It’ll take a while for us to get funded again anyway, and I’ve got some money saved up. They can’t make me stay.”

“They could fire you,” Hermann says mildly. 

Newt snorts. “After I just saved the fucking world? I’d like to see them try.”

Hermann sighs, and turns back to his chalkboards, leaning heavy on his cane. “Well, alright. I can see I won’t be able to stop you.”

“Dude, you should be happy!” Newt says, reaching across the neural link again, and again finding nothing. “You’ve been sick of me for years, you’re finally getting rid of me!”

“Yes, yes, finally some peace and quiet,” Hermann says on a tired sigh. “Might actually be able to get some work done.”

He doesn’t sound nearly as enthusiastic as years of complaints would suggest, and honestly, Newt’s...not that excited about it, either. Being apart from him. 

The thing is, they’ve been friends. Not right away. They met five years ago, here in this room when they were both assigned to Hong Kong’s Shatterdome, and they weren’t friends right away. Honestly, for five years all they’ve done is fight and yell and throw things at each other as they slowly lost colleagues to funding cuts, until it was just them, and. They were in the middle of a war, and tensions were high, and the fighting was necessary—it drove them both crazy but it also drove them onwards, upwards, made them fight that much harder to be _better_. And better had been what they needed. So they had fought, and screamed, and worked in blinding rage, but they had been _friends._

For five years, they haven’t really had anyone but each other. In a situation where everyone around them was focused wholly on beating the enemy into submission, the k-science team was two minds working to _understand_ the enemy, and no one ever understood _them_. So they fought, yes, they drove each other to the brink of madness, but for five years, they listened. They debated. They lent a hand when needed. They fetched each other meals and medication and drinks loaded with caffeine, they pulled blankets over each other on the lab’s ratty couch, they bought each other shitty birthday presents when everyone else forgot the day of the year, they were just. _There_ for each other. Through it all. Through all the fighting. 

And they drifted. That was a thing. They’re drift _compatible_. And Newt didn’t get much from Hermann at the time—a little busy, there, with the Kaiju and saving the world and all—but he’d seen himself. In Hermann’s memories. He knows that he’s been important in Hermann’s life. He couldn’t _not_ be. 

He didn’t get much, mostly vague feelings of frustration and solidarity, but he did get one memory. One bright, shining memory that he noticed because it was so deeply ingrained in his own. 

A year after they’d met. The two of them, in the mess hall, in the middle of the night after both of them forgot to eat supper. Chewing on cold food they found in the kitchens. Newt, looking across the table at Hermann, who was sleepy and grumpy and had chalk dust on his cheek. They’d been talking about something dumb. Unimportant. _Newt_ had been talking—Hermann had been listening and complaining. Newt had smiled. Had said, “Hey, Hermann. Do you want to go out with me sometime?” 

And there had been this long moment of silence. Too long. Hermann had looked at him, expression unreadable. And then he’d said, “Newton, not in a million years.”

Newt had laughed. It had been the only thing he _could_ do, apart from letting tears spring to his burning eyes, as they so desperately wanted to. He had laughed, and kicked Hermann under the table—his good leg—and rolled his eyes. Said something dumb, like, “Yeah, okay, probably for the best.” His heart had clenched so painfully that he’d hunched over. 

It was a shared memory, though Newt saw it for the first time from Hermann’s perspective, his own shining eyes and forced grin. He’d yanked away from it before Hermann could see, from his side of things, Newt going back to his room and crying into his fucking pillowcase. Had focused back on the Kaiju, and saving the world. 

They’d never brought it up after that. They’d never brought up the question, or the response, or the shared memory in the drift. Newt had never asked again, no matter how many times the words had pushed at his lips. Hermann had definitely never rescinded his rejection. They never talked about seeing that memory in the drift, or the fact that both of them remembered it with such clarity. Newt had always just tried to forget it. 

It’s not exactly pleasant, knowing that Hermann definitely hasn’t. 

Still. Still. They’ve been friends, despite that. And they’ve been _together_. Day in, and day out. And they’ve fought and laughed and tried to kill each other. And now Newt is leaving. He’s going on vacation. And he should be relieved, to get away. To get away from the lab, and the Shatterdome, and from _Hermann_. From seeing him every day and trying to make him laugh and remembering, every single day, his face when he said _not in a million years_. He should be relieved. 

He’s not.

~

So Newt goes on his vacation.

He doesn’t take no for an answer, when he asks Marshal Hansen for leave of absence. He puts his foot down and says, in no uncertain terms, that he’s _taking_ a vacation, and he’ll come back when he’s good and ready. Marshal Hansen throws up his hands, sighs, and says he might as well just go, then, if he’s not actually asking for permission. Newt smiles, and books the first one-way flight to Miami, Florida. 

It’s not exactly his dream destination. He’d always said he was going to go somewhere tropical, somewhere new and cool. But he has a family friend who owns a seaside cottage south of Miami, and it’s on the Atlantic, and it’ll be warm, and it’s far away from Hong Kong. And Newt’s kind of missed being able to talk to the locals when he goes out. It’ll do, for now. 

He packs in a rush, with no idea how long he’ll be gone, throwing all of the beach-appropriate attire he has into a ratty old suitcase and voice-recording memos for anyone who might be in his lab in the interim. 

“Don’t start any experiments without me,” he says into his recorder, rifling through his messy drawers for his swim shorts. He knows he must have had a pair, once. “But also, do whatever you want, I don’t fucking care. No, actually, I do. Don’t touch my samples. But if you do, since I can’t stop you, keep _very_ detailed notes, and also email me all your plans and ideas, basically just every thought you have, but _don’t_ touch any of my current experiments, they’re on ice right now metaphorically speaking but I _will_ be coming back to them, _eventually_. Oh, but if you happen to see something happening with that hunk of Mutavore’s stomach lining, let me know. Not that I’ll be checking my email, because I’m on vacation.”

“I have the distinct feeling these instructions will not be helpful to anyone at all,” says a voice from the door. 

Newt whips around to look at Hermann, who’s standing in his doorway and watching him silently. “Oh, hey man. Just wanted to make sure no one messes anything up while I’m gone.”

Hermann nods slowly. “So you’re leaving, then?”

“Yeah, my flight leaves in like four hours,” Newt says. “Cost me a fucking fortune, by the way. And I think I got one of those seats in the middle of the row.”

Hermann hums, looks around Newt’s disaster zone of a room.

“I was going to tell you before I left,” Newt adds quickly when Hermann doesn’t say anything. “I wasn’t gonna just, like. Bail without saying anything.”

Hermann nods again, still silent. 

“This is your last chance to come with me, dude,” Newt says, trying to keep his voice light and cheerful. “Trip of a lifetime. Palm trees and beaches.”

Hermann ignores him, like he hadn’t said anything. “Take care of yourself, Newton,” he says, voice low and steady. “Don’t do anything idiotic.”

Newt blinks. “Yeah, uh. Okay. Thanks, man.”

Hermann looks at him for a moment, his gaze more intense than Newt can handle in close proximity, in such a small space. And then he nods and says, “I will see you on the other side.”

Newt swallows thickly. “Yeah. Yup. See you.”

Hermann turns around and leaves, the sound of his cane on the cement floors echoing down the hallway. 

Newt exhales slowly, turns back to his half-packed suitcase. He feels a lot less excited now. 

But his flight leaves in four hours and it’ll take him an hour to get to the airport. So he finishes packing, digs out his passport, finds something to eat. And then he takes a taxi to Hong Kong Airport, and goes through security. He sits at his gate and stares at his phone. He thinks about texting Hermann. He doesn’t know what he’d say. He just...wants to talk to him. Years and years of living in each other’s pockets, and spending most of their time at each other’s throats, and all he wants to do the minute he leaves the Shatterdome is talk to Hermann. It’s pathetic. 

He looks up restaurants in Miami instead. He’s on vacation. He might as well act like it.

~

The beachside cottage is exactly what Newt had imagined it to be. A tiny little villa tucked just on the edge of the beach, right up against a quiet slice of the Atlantic Ocean. White walls, a cute little porch in the back, potted plants on either side of the blue door. A garden up along the front drive, palm trees to throw dappled shade over Newt’s rental car. It’s a small place, one bedroom with a cozy living room just off the little kitchen, with all the walls in pale colours and all the floors in honey-coloured hardwood and dove grey carpet. It belongs to a friend of his dad’s, a semi-famous cellist who spends the spring here with his wife and rents it out to elderly couples the rest of the year. And to Newt, for the next however long he wants.

Newt runs his hands over the smooth fabric of the velvet sofa as he walks past it, the smooth wood of a baby grand piano in the corner next to the hallway to the bedroom. He drags his suitcase regrettably over the pristine floors, into the room, and takes in its lush, queen-sized bed, its huge windows letting in muted light through bamboo blinds, the soft throw blanket thrown over the end of the bed, opposite a pile of blue and grey pillows. It’s not a large room, but it comfortably fits the bed and the stately wood dresser and nightstand and bookshelf, as well as the chest at the foot of the bed and a plush rug on the floor. It’s nice. Really nice. 

Evening is falling over southern Florida, and Newt is tired enough to collapse face-first into the bed and pass out immediately, but he finishes his tour of the house first, pokes around the gleamingly white bathroom with its enormous tub and marble countertops, and the hallway closet packed full of pillows and linens. He grabs a quick shower, because he’s sweaty and grimy and feels guilty about spoiling the cottage with his filth, and then he brushes his teeth and changes into clean boxers and an old t-shirt and climbs, shuddering, into bed. 

It’s almost too comfortable to bear. For nine years now, since he joined the Jaeger Academy in ‘16, he’s been living in military-style bunks, sleeping on flat mattresses in cold, damp rooms, eating off of trays in huge, impersonal mess halls. For nine years he has been too hot or too cold, and sore and tired and covered in vaguely disturbing substances, and now he’s—clean, and sinking into four inches of memory foam, and the night stretches ahead of him with nothing waiting for him in the morning. It makes his eyes burn, and it makes his stomach uneasy. It feels wrong, and that makes Newt feel something dark and sick. That comfort feels forbidden to him now. 

He’d spiral, probably, if he weren’t so exhausted. As it is, he barely has time to think about it before he falls dead asleep. 

He wakes up to a nearly-dark room, stomach growling plaintively and body confused about what time it is. He groans, rolls over, takes a minute to remember where he is and why it feels like he’s sinking into a fathomless marshmallow. A draft from the vents blows an artificially cool breeze over his face. He remembers, _vacation_. He remembers, _fucking jetlag_. 

It’s been a while since he left Hong Kong, even for work-related trips to look at Kaiju remains in different coastal cities. The flights were hell, and they’re over now, but the jetlag’s going to be a bitch for a couple days at least. Newt sighs, drags himself upright, out of the clutches of the mattress. The bedside alarm clock reads 4:34am. 

Even if he was willing to go out into town to find food, nothing’s going to be open for another few hours at least. So he wanders into the kitchen after using the bathroom, pokes around in the cupboards and fridge. People stay here pretty often, he knows, and some of the stuff left behind looks like it hasn’t expired. He ends up heating up a can of beans on the stove and eating it with slightly stale crackers before it’s totally warm. 

Honestly, it’s the most familiar part of his stay so far. It feels like home, and that’s disturbing, but it’s the truth. 

Light filters in through the windows slowly as Newt sits around, growing increasingly restless. Anxiety curls in his stomach, and he doesn’t really know why, pins it on the adult ADHD, until he realizes he’s never felt less relaxed in his life. Well, maybe an overstatement—he was chased by Kaiju in the streets of Hong Kong terrifyingly recently—but. He came here to sit around and do nothing, and his body _hates it._

He hasn’t done nothing in...decades. Even before K-Day, there was school, there was the endless pursuit of knowledge. Always trying to be better, smarter, make things, learn things. Writing music or reading academic literature or trying to change the world. His brain just goes and goes and goes, and he _never_ relaxes, he never has the _chance_ to relax. 

Sitting still, now, makes him anxious and scared. 

He tries to fight it for a while, tries to force his muscles to stop tensing, his foot to stop bouncing, his mind to stop spinning. As the sun rises over the horizon, he goes outside, sits on the porch, stares out across the beach and over the ocean. That’s even worse. His heartbeat pounds in his throat, presses at his ribs. It’s too much; it’s not enough. 

He leaves the house. He walks into town, even though he could have taken his rental car; relishes the fresh sea air playing at his hair, and the relief of movement as he speed-walks down the street. He tries to slow down, to meander, but Newt hasn’t meandered in maybe his entire life. So he walks fast, feels the slap of his feet on the concrete. Familiar. He’s wearing ratty sneakers, and thinks about buying flip-flops instead. He hasn’t worn anything open-toed in years, either. He lives in a lab. 

The cottage he’s staying in is a forty-minute drive from the city, but just a ten-minute walk from a quaint little village, probably populated by the old and super-rich types who prefer to spend their money on insanely expensive land rather than high-rise condos. It’s nice, honestly—a strip of road lined with cute little souvenir shops and diners. Newt knows that there’s a pier just north of them, where the beaches are public and the docks are crowded with tourists. But here he has a little slice of serenity, where he can walk along the street and smell breakfast diners cooking up eggs and bacon, and seagulls are wheeling overhead. 

He makes a full loop of the village, looks at every single shop and at the menus posted outside every single restaurant. He goes into the general store as soon as it opens and buys some basic essentials—bread, peanut butter, milk, eggs, ice cream. He regrets it immediately, because that means he has to go home to put them in the fridge. And then pretends not to feel that way, because he’s on vacation and he shouldn’t dread his cute, quiet little villa. 

He’s in the middle of putting away his groceries when he hears a shriek of laughter from outside. He peers out the back door, sees a family of four on the stretch of beach right next to him, two little girls in bathing suits splashing in the water as a mother holds a baby nearby. That, at least, makes Newt smile. He remembers being that young, his dad or uncle or both taking him to the beach first in Germany, and then in America. He remembers jumping against the waves of the sea, and letting the current carry him out, and he remembers looking for fish, or crabs, or whatever else he could find to prod at with sticks. Fishing with his uncle off the side of a little boat. The feeling of a wet life jacket rubbing against his skin. 

He knew how to relax, once. Or at least how to...have fun. 

Newt smiles, and finishes putting his things away, and then goes to change into his swim shorts. 

The beach is lovely this time of year. It’s late January, and even in southern Florida it doesn’t get that hot in the winter months, but it’s nice. The sun is shining, and there’s a nice breeze coming in off the water, and the sand is warm under Newt’s feet without being hot. The kids are still running around and playing nearby, and it’s a nice backtrack to the crash of the waves on the beach as Newt spreads out his towel on the sand and sits down on it with a bowl of ice cream. 

The weird feeling sets in almost immediately, heavy in Newt’s gut. Something like dread, something sickly anxious. He frowns down at his ice cream, already melting, and then out across the water. He has sunglasses on, non-prescription, so everything is slightly unfocused around the edges, and he thinks it’ll probably give him a headache soon. He looks out at the ocean, spoon sticking out of his mouth. It’s darker through the lenses of his glasses, and roils under the cloudless sky. Vast and swirling and unknowable. Newt’s breath picks up as the scent of saltwater overwhelms him, sharp and metallic. It clogs his throat. He can’t look away from the water. 

Nearby, a child screams. Newt breathes hard, turns, sees a little girl sitting under the crest of a wave that sweeps over her. Another shriek. Newt lurches to his feet, panic gripping at his chest. 

_Kaiju_, he almost screams, heart pounding as he imagines the little girl being pulled under the water by a grabbing claw. _Get away._

And then the wave recedes, and the sound piercing through the rushing in his ears changes to raucous laughter. The little girl is still sitting there, hair plastered to her face, lips stretched in a grin. Her sister is running and jumping into the next wave with a joyous whoop. Their mother warns them to be careful. 

Newt’s throat aches as he swallows down a shaky sound, and remembers, belatedly, where he is. Florida. The Atlantic Ocean. There are no Kaiju here. There are no Kaiju anywhere—they closed the Breach. Nothing is about to rise out of the water to destroy everyone’s lives. This place is untouched by death and destruction. 

He sits down again, trembling. His bowl of ice cream had been dropped in the sand, overturned, and he leaves it there. He breathes slow and deep, and slowly, the scent of blood turns back into sand and sun and saltwater. He flexes his stiff arms and legs, curls his fingers and toes. Everything is fine. Everyone is okay. 

Now. Everyone is okay _now_. 

Except maybe Newt. 

He spends another hour on the beach, sifting warm sand through his fingers, digging a deep hole next to his towel, finding rocks and shells and sorting them by colour, then by size. He rubs a bit of smooth beach glass between his fingers, over and over and over. He focuses on the sky, on the horizon, on the gentle chatter of the mother and her children, who will not die under the claws of an enormous monster. Newt knows this. He helped make it true. 

He helped make it true, and now he’s on a beach, relaxing, because that’s what you deserve after you help save the world. You get to sit on the beach and not think about work or death or the people who helped you save the world—the people that didn’t make it, and the people who did, right beside you. Minds connected. 

Newt groans and hauls himself to his feet, and back inside. The ocean is taunting him. 

He watches TV on the flatscreen in the living room for the next couple of hours, just so he can stop thinking for a little while. It’s another thing he hasn’t been able to do in a really, _really_ long time. Sometimes he would play old movies on his laptop while he was working, usually in the background while he waited for solutions to precipitate or bacteria cultures to develop, but _rarely_ did he have a chance to sit down and just watch something for fun. And even when he did, it was usually old material, reruns from the last decade. 

All of this to say, Newt has no idea what’s happening in the sitcom he stopped keeping up with six years ago, but he watches it anyway, laughs when he knows he’s supposed to laugh, Googles recaps of the last four seasons on his phone. He switches the channel, once, and lands on an enormous picture of Stacker Pentecost as the news reports, endlessly, on the goings-on around the Hong Kong Shatterdome. He switches back quickly, and doesn’t try to find something else to watch for the rest of the afternoon. 

The rest of his first day goes great, if great includes eating a bunch of garbage and watching bad television and falling asleep on the couch in the middle of the day. And if great means a kind of low-grade anxiety coursing through his veins, and a constant hum in his head that tells him he should be _doing_ something, and if he stops doing something, people will die.

On the second morning, after he wakes up once again before five a.m., this time from a screaming nightmare, Newt finds a sheet of paper and writes a letter. 

_Hey Hermann_, he writes, and it’s not because he’s bored out of his mind, it’s _definitely_ not because the silence is driving him to the brink of insanity. _Florida’s great. Seriously, the weather’s amazing, and I’m right on the beach, and the cottage is a dream come true. I’m telling you, you should have come! It’s really beautiful and relaxing. Nothing to bother me, all day. No work to worry about or anything. It’s been great! You’re missing out. You could have sat on the sand and read books or whatever it is you do. Knit sweaters. In the sun! That still exists, did you know? Haha. Anyway, just wanted to brag about my sweet digs. Livin’ the high life dude. Just like I always said I would. So yeah. Wanted you to know I was alive! That’s all. Newt._

It’s possibly the most pathetic thing he’s ever done, but it helps to pass the time until the sun rises, and this time, when he walks to town, he stops at the post office to send the letter away, with his return address carefully penned onto the envelope. He sends it by express mail, just because. Not because he’s hoping for an equally quick reply, of course. Just so that Hermann won’t worry about his plane crashing or anything. That’s all. 

He could have just as well sent an email, which would have been faster and cheaper, but Newt is terrified every time he thinks about opening his inbox. Something about the possibility of someone there telling him they were wrong, that the breach isn’t closed, that it isn’t _over._ He knows he should be checking it, making sure no one needs him desperately, but he can’t stomach it. So he sticks to snail mail. Safer that way. 

Anyway, then that’s done, and it’s back to...relaxing. Which Newt loves! Of course. Nothing bad or vaguely horrifying about spending the next twenty-four hours once again in total silence. It’s not like the yawning emptiness of the day ahead of him is terrifying to him or anything. 

Not at all.

~

It’s four days, three spine-chilling nightmares, two mild panic attacks, and one torrential downpour later that there’s a knock at Newt’s door, and he opens it expecting to see a hapless neighbour asking if his power’s still on, and instead finds Hermann standing there, soaking wet and miserable.

Newt gapes at him. “_Hermann?_” 

“Yes, hello Newton,” Hermann says, water dripping from the tip of his nose. “Might I come in?”

Dumbly, Newt moves aside and lets Hermann step into the entryway, dripping onto the front rug. 

It’s late—something like ten in the evening, but Newt’s not totally sure because the power _did_ flicker an hour ago and all the clocks are blinking—and it’s dark outside, humid and sticky. Newt has spent the entire day inside, listening to the rain come down on the roof of the cottage, eyes closed, revelling in the steady non-silence. Like the hum of machinery in the Shatterdome. It was soothing. 

It fails to soothe him now, as his heart jumps into his throat and blocks anything from coming out of his mouth, staring at _Hermann_ on his _rug_. As if Newt hadn’t spent half of his day pretending to have conversations with Hermann in his head, just to keep from going crazy. As if Newt hadn’t considered, at least six times, catching the next flight back to Hong Kong just to see his face again. 

Newt’s really pathetic when he’s bored and depressed. 

Hermann doesn’t say anything either, for a long time, just standing there dripping and looking exhausted and nervous, like he thinks Newt might be about to kick him out into the rain but is too tired to care. “I sent a letter,” he says at last, jaw working. “But it must not have arrived yet.”

Newt gapes at him some more. 

Hermann begins to look supremely uncomfortable, the way he does when he’s forced to cross Newt’s side of the lab when he’s elbows-deep in a dissection. “Is this...alright? You said in your letter—”

Newt’s message comes rushing back to him. _You should have come_. He’d definitely said that. And...invited Hermann to join him several times before that. Never expecting Hermann to _agree_, but. He’d said it. And. He’d meant it. “Ah!” he says, too loudly for his little, quiet cottage. “No, of course! Dude! I’m—so happy you’re here!”

Slowly, Hermann’s lips curl up in the shadow of a smile. 

“Come in!” Newt says, the words falling out of his mouth in a clumsy rush. He reaches out, snags the weathered leather carry-on from Hermann’s hand so quickly Hermann jerks away from it. “Is this all you brought? Dude, are there even any clothes in here, or just books?”

“I wasn’t sure how long I’d be staying,” Hermann says stiffly, looking around the place with a cautious gaze, like he might be deciding if he wants to leave _now_. 

“You just flew like twenty-four hours to get here, man, it’s not like you’re gonna leave after a couple of days.” Newt says it like he hadn’t been seriously considering doing exactly that. 

Hermann shrugs his thin shoulders, which look very miserable under the sodden weight of his oversized tweed jacket. _Tweed_. In _Florida_. “Are you sure it’s alright if I stay?”

“Hermann, I’m _serious_. I’m glad you’re here!” And he is, _really_. And not only because he thought his brain was going to collapse under the sheer weight of the continued silence. Or maybe from a panic attack. “Come in, you’re all...wet, and probably really fucking tired. Take off your shoes.”

Hermann does so obligingly, and Newt is struck with the sudden realization that he doesn’t think he’s ever _seen_ Hermann in just his socks before. In the lab, they’re required to wear shoes—Hermann in his nerdy Oxfords, Newt in his steel-toed Doc Martens. And on the rare occasion that Newt seeks Hermann out in his bunk late at night to talk, he’s always at _least_ in slippers. But now he’s standing in Newt’s entryway in striped grey socks, toes flexing against the hardwood, and Newt. Has a strange feeling about that. 

It’s weirdly cute. 

Hermann sheds his jacket next, and Newt is struck by two thoughts at once—one, that unless Hermann walked here from town, he must have been standing outside in the rain before knocking to be this wet, and two, that the cottage is not exactly equipped for two guests who are not...intimate.

“So, um, quick aside,” Newt says, flashing a grin he knows is not convincing at all. “There’s only one room in this place. And one bed.”

Hermann halts where he was about to hang up his jacket, as if considering putting it back on and leaving. 

“But it’s fine!” Newt says quickly, maybe a little desperately. “Seriously, it’s fine, it’s yours! You can sleep in the bed. These couches are actually, like, hella comfortable. I actually already spent one night on this couch.” He pats the back of the couch that sits just inside the doorway emphatically. He does not mention that he had fallen asleep in the living room because he couldn’t sleep in the silent bedroom—had had to keep the TV on all night in the background. “So yeah. Bedroom. It’s yours.”

“Newton, I couldn’t possibly—”

“_Hermann_,” Newt says, rolling his eyes. “I’m serious. Go put your stuff in the bedroom. If I start getting jealous, we can swap.”

He already knows he will not ask to swap.

The fact that Hermann gives in and starts dragging his bag and himself towards the door Newt is emphatically pointing at only goes to show how exhausted he is. When in top form, Newt knows for a fact that the argument would have lasted at least another full hour, with the exact same end result. 

“I don’t really have much to eat, sorry,” Newt rambles as he follows Hermann to the bedroom, and then darts in ahead of him to hastily clean up some of the things he’s left strewn around the floor. “I haven’t done any, like. Comprehensive grocery shopping. But I can make you, like, a peanut butter sandwich. Or something.”

“Anything is fine, Newton,” Hermann says, sighing as he sets his bag down on the floor next to the bed. “Could I take a shower?”

“Of course! The bathroom’s through here, and there’s clean towels, uh, under the sink I think, and. Yeah. Go for it. I’ll make us a snack.”

Hermann turns to him then, and smiles a little, soft and tired and warm. Newt’s heart clenches painfully, and he really takes it in, then, that this is happening. Hermann is _here_. In Florida. And he hasn’t said why, hasn’t given any explanation at all, but Newt can imagine him working in utter silence in their lab, sighing and feeling that same anxious uneasiness that hasn’t left Newt for days, not until this very moment. He doesn’t know if it’s true, but he can imagine it. 

He grins. “Tea?”

Hermann’s smile ticks farther up on one side. “Something herbal, if you have it.”

“I’ll check.” And Newt backs out of the bedroom, keeping his eyes on Hermann’s weird, familiar, perfect face until the last second. 

God. Newt’s so happy to see him. 

He makes peanut butter sandwiches and steeps some honey-ginger tea he finds in a cabinet while Hermann takes his shower, chest lighter than it’s been in days, or maybe years. 

It feels absolutely surreal, sitting across from each other at the little kitchen table ten minutes later, eating their sandwiches and sipping at their drinks in silence. Newt watches Hermann in quiet, slightly overwhelmed awe. He looks tired, like he can barely keep his eyes open, but he also looks peaceful, his breaths slow and even, his shoulders relaxed. It soaks into Newt’s bones, maybe through the ghost drift—still here, apparently, almost three weeks later, and that’s not normal, is it?—and it soothes him more than anything else about this vacation has. For the first time in weeks, months, years, Newt feels like he is at rest. Like he can _breathe_. 

Hermann takes another sip from his mug of tea, avoiding Newt’s steady gaze expertly, as he has been for years. He closes his eyes for a long time, like he was just going to blink but is now struggling to open them again. It makes Newt feel ridiculously fond. “Thank you, Newton, for allowing me to stay.”

“Dude, you’re killing me,” Newt says, grinning. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Hermann blinks his eyes open. “I know you were looking forward to your vacation—”

“Oh shut up, as if you actually believe I thrive on solitude.”

Hermann’s lips quirk up in a smile. “I suppose that’s true.”

Newt’s heart wells up with affection, and he swallows it down, knows it wouldn’t be welcome. “Go to sleep. You look like you’re about to keel over.”

Hermann huffs, but doesn’t argue. 

“Tomorrow we’ll talk and do stuff. Catch up. But for now—I’m serious, Hermann, are you even registering the words I’m saying?”

“Contrary to popular belief, I _do_ listen to you even when you’re not doing something specifically to vex me,” Hermann tells him, eyes fluttering closed again. 

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Newt says, and thinks maybe he’s never loved Hermann more than in this moment. 

The feeling is familiar, as is the crushing disappointment afterwards when he remembers the futility of loving Hermann so _fucking_ much. It’s been four years. If he hasn’t changed his mind about returning Newt’s feelings yet, he’s probably not going to. 

The only unfamiliar thing is the spike of fear that the ghost drift will choose now to reactivate between them, and Hermann will get a whiff of his relentless longing. 

Thankfully, though, Hermann just keeps nodding off into his mug of tea, and Newt breathes a quiet sigh of relief. A minute later, he’s tugging Hermann gently to his feet, pushing him in the direction of the bedroom. It’s only after Hermann’s closed away in his room that Newt remembers that he left all his clothes in there, and he’s forced to just strip down to his t-shirt and boxers and curl up under a blanket he finds in the hallway closet. He’ll figure out clothes in the morning. 

The house goes silent, and Newt breathes quietly into it. Distantly, he can hear the lap of the waves at the beach, soft and rhythmic, and Newt can pretend, for a minute, that it’s the sound of Hermann’s steady breathing. He matches his own breaths to it, to the ebb and flow of the sea, to the throbbing heartbeat of the Atlantic Ocean. He thinks about Hermann, asleep just on the other side of a door. 

It doesn’t make sense, because they were just a couple rooms apart in the Shatterdome, have slept separated by just a couple walls for years. They shared a lab, just the two of them, every single day for almost as long. It doesn’t make sense that it would feel so close, now; so intimate. Maybe it’s the silence. The way they’re isolated from the rest of the world. In Hong Kong, the Shatterdome was always thrumming around them, if not with people then the hum of machinery. Here, in a tiny cottage next to the sea on the beaches of southern Florida, they’re completely alone. Newt feels like he could reach out and touch Hermann, somehow. 

Ah, he thinks. Ghost drift. That feeling like Hermann is right there with him, _part_ of him, filling a little hollow in his chest he never knew was there, with a direct line up to the base of his skull, where the Pons headset had connected. No thoughts or feelings really come across the link—or at least, none that Newt can pick out—but he feels Hermann there, a vague sense of him. Now that Hermann is asleep, it’s more comforting than anything. For the first time since he left the Shatterdome, Newt doesn’t feel like he’s falling asleep alone. 

He smiles, and closes his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

Newt wakes up the next morning to the sound of a cabinet closing with a muffled bang, and then some muttered cursing. He cracks his eyes open blearily, cranes his neck up to blink tired eyes in the direction of the kitchen, where watery light is beginning to filter in through the shades. 

Hermann is shuffling around the dark room, looking soft and vulnerable in pinstripe pajama bottoms and a frayed t-shirt, opening and closing cupboards and peering into them. 

“Hermann?” Newt says, voice rough from sleep. 

“Ah,” Hermann says, turning to look at him sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Newt shakes his head, struggles to sit up, slightly stiff from another night on the couch. He’s not as young as he used to be. “Hungry?”

“No, don’t get up, don’t mind me,” Hermann says, waving him away. “Go back to sleep.”

Newt smiles, stretching his arms over his head. “Dude, I’m your host, morally I can’t sleep while you’re hungry and foraging for breakfast.”

“Your morals are grey at best, Newton, I think you can manage it,” Hermann says with what Newt imagines is fond dryness. 

“I can’t believe you would say that; I’m Chaotic Good at worst,” Newt says with a grin. “I saved the world like three weeks ago.”

Hermann smiles, rolls his eyes. 

Newt heaves himself to his feet a moment later, feeling like his joints are creaking in the absurdly early hour. It’s probably something like five in the morning; Newt’s only just started waking up after six from the jetlag. He turns on a lamp in the living room and moves around by the warm light of it, poking around in the kitchen, getting out things to eat. 

“Sorry if the bread’s stale,” Newt says, throwing a couple slices into the toaster. “I have jam, though. Strawberry.”

“Strawberry is fine,” Hermann says, standing next to the table awkwardly. 

Newt glances back at him with a crooked smile. “We ate breakfast together for five years, Herms. I know that you like strawberry jam.”

Hermann clears his throat, looks away. 

It’s times like these when Newt wonders if Hermann knows that Newt’s still gone on him. Newt hasn’t brought it up since that first and only time he’d asked Hermann out, and he’s always hoped, in a vague sort of way, that Hermann took that to mean Newt isn’t that invested anymore. That Newt did the sensible thing and stopped caring. It’d just be less embarrassing all around, if Hermann didn’t know Newt’s been pining uselessly for years, and that 90% of the things he says and does are dictated by his feelings for Hermann. 

Well, 90% of the non-Kaiju related things. 

He hopes that, but whenever Hermann looks away when Newt looks at him, or when Newt says something too fond or knowing, Newt starts to think maybe he does know. And that’s always a bit of a kick to the stomach. That it still makes him uncomfortable, after all this time. 

The toast pops up, and Newt burns his fingers plucking them out of the toaster before moving to the cupboard to find more tea. Earl Grey this time—Hermann always drinks something caffeinated in the morning. It’s really not Newt’s fault that he knows him so well. They practically lived together. For _five years_. And Newt’s not a genius because he has a bad memory or garbage observation skills. 

They sit down a minute later, with their toast and Hermann’s tea and Newt’s milk. The world is completely silent around them, in these shivery pre-dawn hours. If Newt listens closely, he can hear the ticking of a clock in another room, and the seagulls outside, and the quiet waves. Hermann’s breathing, like he could imagine he could hear last night. Hermann taps his toe against the floor. 

No, wait, that’s Newt. He stops the incessant bouncing of his foot. 

“So,” Hermann says softly, like he doesn’t want to disrupt the peace. He looks so soft and vulnerable in his pajamas that Newt wants to cry a little.

“So?” Newt says, picking up crumbs off the table with one fingertip. 

Hermann clears his throat, takes a bracing sip of tea. “What do you...do? Here. During the day.”

“Bored already?” Newt says with a grin that falls flat. “Not exactly the Shatterdome surrounding an international crisis, huh?”

“No, not exactly,” Hermann says with a huff. “But I was only asking out of curiosity.”

Newt laughs a little, shrugs. “I don’t do much, honestly. Relax, I guess. Walk into town sometimes. Eat food that’s bad for me. Sit on the beach. Nap.”

He doesn’t mention, of course, that he’s been dead tired since he got here because he keeps waking up from nightmares, or that he spends the majority of his time watching random YouTube videos to keep his mind occupied because otherwise he just spends all his time anxiously overthinking stuff. 

From Hermann’s ridiculously soft, sympathetic gaze, he thinks Hermann might know anyway. 

“It’s hard to relax when I haven’t been able to for like ten years,” Newt admits. “And like. I don’t really remember how to have a hobby?”

Hermann hums and nods thoughtfully, chewing quietly on his toast. 

They don’t speak for the rest of their meal, but the silence is comfortable, now, and Newt feels lighter, somehow. Just for having said it. 

By the time they’ve finished, the sun has risen over the horizon, and the sea is painted in soft golds. Hermann looks out the back door at it, still sitting placidly at the table, and for the first time, Newt doesn’t feel dread at the prospect of the long day ahead of them. 

“Well,” Hermann says, tapping one fingertip against the tabletop. “Shall we...go out and enjoy the weather?”

“Yeah!” Newt says, too quickly and too loudly for the early-morning tranquility. “Almost every day here has been beautiful,” he adds, standing up and brushing crumbs from his shirt. “Other than yesterday. Just, endless sunshine and nice sea breezes.”

Hermann nods again, and they both get up and wander towards the bedroom. 

“I just need to get some clothes,” Newt says, slipping through the door. The bed is already made—it’s unbearably endearing to Newt, who hasn’t made it since he arrived. “Oh, shit, dude, sorry I didn’t, like. Change the sheets for you or anything.”

“Newton, I have lived the last five years in a lab covered in Kaiju filth. I can sleep one night in sheets that are not perfectly fresh.”

Newt snorts, and figures they probably weren’t _that_ bad—he’s only spent a couple of nights actually in the bed, and he hasn’t exactly been in the mood for...anything other than sleeping. 

He grabs some clothes from his suitcase, a wrinkled t-shirt and some shorts he’s already worn twice, and then turns around and catches sight of Hermann’s open luggage. 

“Oh my god, Hermann, _no_,” Newt says. 

Hermann turns and looks at him with a frown, dismay etched around his eyes. “They’re the only clothes I brought.”

“You can_not_ go walking around sunny Florida looking like you just got home from giving a lecture,” Newt tells him, almost laughing. “I won’t allow it. You’re on _vacation._” 

“Well, I can’t just go around naked,” Hermann says. 

_More’s the pity_, Newt thinks but very much does not say. Instead, he says, “You can borrow some of mine.” 

Hermann’s cheeks immediately go pink, and he says, "Newton, I couldn't possibly—"

"You could, and you will!" Newt says, back to rifling through his luggage. "Okay, I don't have much for uhhhh. Clean clothes. Haha. But I do have this shirt which I haven't worn yet because it was at the very bottom!" He yanks out a truly enormous t-shirt with a faded _I WANT TO BELIEVE_ logo on it, which he honestly hasn't worn as anything other than a sleep shirt in years.

"Wonderful," Hermann says dryly.

"Hey, it's better than you wearing three sweater vests on the beach," Newt says. He does some more digging. "I'm not sure if I have any shorts that will fit you, though, you're really fucking skinny and I have child-bearing hips—"

"Alas, I suppose I'll just have to wear my own trousers," Hermann says with an air of very false regret.

"Not on my watch, buddy," Newt says. "I think I have a pair with like, a drawstring waist in here. Somewhere."

"I refuse to wear something with a drawstring waist outside of the house. I refuse to wear that _shirt_ outside of the house."

"Yeah, well, I refuse to let you outside of the house looking like my grandfather, so it appears we are at an impasse," Newt says, and then victoriously pulls out a pair of faded red denim shorts with a tattered drawstring. "Aha!"

Hermann gives him such a flat, longsuffering look that Newt laughs out loud.

"Just put it on, Herms, you can die of humiliation later. We're on vacation. _Look like it._ Otherwise you'll overheat instantly."

"Every day, you cause me such suffering," Hermann tells him, but he actually takes the clothes that Newt holds out to him, which is honestly kind of a surprise.

"Admit it, you were dead bored without me," Newt says with a grin.

Hermann huffs and doesn't respond, and Newt realizes with a start that that's probably an admission in and of itself.

He scampers out of the room with his own clothes quickly, before Hermann can think of something cutting to say to negate it.

A few minutes later, Newt is wearing his clothes for the day—an oversized tank top with aliens on it and ripped denim cutoffs that he definitely made himself from a beloved pair of jeans and also definitely cut a little bit shorter than intended. He's twisting in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to tell if they make his ass look good or make him look like a thirty-something dude trying to look twenty-something and twenty pounds lighter when he hears the bedroom door open. Immediately, he's slamming the bathroom door open, way too loud, and poking his head out just as Hermann steps into the hall.

Newt almost makes an actual noise. Hermann looks cute as hell in Newt's clothes, all too big on him and about a zillion times more casual than anything Newt's ever seen him in. The shirt hangs on him like a six-year-old in his older brother's hand-me-downs, and it's tucked into shorts that are short enough to show off his knobby knees, and he's still wearing striped socks—blue this time—and it's just. It's so fucking cute. He looks kind of like a first-grader who dressed himself—he looks like _Newt_ as a first-grader—and Newt is _fucking_ in love with him.

He clears his throat, tries to get his grin under control, and fails. "Looking good," he says, and bites his lip to hold back a laugh.

Hermann gives him a very familiar look, like he's about one second from strangling Newt with zero regrets. "This was your idea, you horrible little man."

"I'm serious, Herms! You look good! This is a good look for you. Summer Holidays Hermann. Hold on, have you _ever_ gone to, like, a beach?"

"Of course I have," Hermann says caustically.

"But for fun though? Not just for Kaiju reasons?"

Hermann levels him with a very unimpressed look. "Yes, Newton. It has been a few years, but I have, indeed, been to the beach for pleasure."

Newt clutches his chest imagining it. Little Hermann Gottlieb, building structurally sound sandcastles with utmost solemnity. It takes him a second to remember why he asked. "Well, what did you wear then?"

Hermann's face flushes. "That...is not relevant. It was a different time in my life."

Newt gapes at him. "Holy shit, dude, that's so mysterious and vague. What the hell phase did you _go_ through?"

Hermann huffs. "Are we going to go outside today yet or not?"

And Newt knows an evasion tactic when he hears one, but he also thinks this is probably his only chance to get Hermann to actually step outside dressed as he is, and he's going to take it. "Yeah, yeah. Come on, put your shoes on. Hey, do these shorts make my ass look fat?"

He steps out fully into the hall for the first time and turns around to hitch up the back of his shirt, and then twists to look at Hermann, who is not responding. Not that Newt really expected him to.

Hermann is just staring at him, leaning heavily on his cane. After a moment, his eyes flick up to Newt's. "I— What is the response you're looking for here?"

Newt shrugs. "That I look hot I guess."

Hermann's gaze does not stray from Newt's eyes. "Do you really expect me to say those words?"

_Not in a million years,_ Newt thinks with an internal sigh. "You're such a bore, Herms. Okay, let's go!"

They actually make it out the door, which is an accomplishment as far as Newt's concerned. And then they just...walk. Newt still doesn't have a very good relationship with the ocean, if he's being honest, so he takes Hermann into town, watches Hermann closely to make sure it's not too hard on his leg. The sun's coming up, now, and dawn is soft and peaceful and just warm enough to feel amazing against Newt's skin. He closes his eyes as they walk, breathes it in deeply. When he opens them again, Hermann's looking at him, and there's a softness around his eyes and mouth that Newt's not sure he's ever seen before.

Maybe vacation was a good idea for them after all.

They get a second breakfast at the first diner that opens, eggs and toast and hashbrowns, and sit there in the light of the big front window nursing cups of coffee until the sun sits higher in the sky and the rest of the village starts to wake up. They're both quiet as they eat, in a way that reminds Newt of the heavy silences between them the morning after a Kaiju attack that devastated another city and that they couldn't stop, could never stop.

(But they did stop them. They finally stopped them.)

But it's not quite the same. It's still a little stiff, a little weighted and uncomfortable, but it's not that same feeling of grief and guilt and numb shock. It's just, Newt thinks, that it's so quiet and peaceful, and the words get stuck in his throat when he looks across the table at Hermann, when he thinks about disturbing this careful balance he's accidentally managed to strike. He's never wanted comfortable silences before, that was never his goal, and he still doesn't have it—this silence isn't exactly _comfortable_—but he finds himself not wanting to ruin whatever he has, right here. This peace.

He never wanted peace, but maybe it was because he never thought he'd ever have it.

They go to the store after breakfast, buy some direly needed groceries, some essentials that Hermann forgot in his obvious rush to pack. Hermann picks out a couple things from the clothes available for tourists at the general store, and Newt is surprised to see him buy his own pair of shorts. That he's willingly _choosing_ to wear shorts. Newt doesn't say anything, though, just in case it makes Hermann go back and return them or something. That sounds like something he would do. Unlike _buying shorts._

He doesn't say much, honestly. Newt doesn't, and neither does Hermann. It's...uncanny. They talk here and there, about the town and the owner of the cottage and the weather. They go back to the cottage and spend most of the day inside, watching TV or on their laptops, and neither of them talk about why, neither of them talk about the unbelievable vastness of _outside_, the way it just goes on and on, full of people who are no longer under threat of attack, who are going to have to learn how to live again, how to live without being scared all the time. Just like Newt and Hermann will. Neither of them talk about much at all, and that's so unlike them, that's so unlike the constant fighting of the past five years, but. War changes you, Newt supposes. And so does the end of a war.

It's weird. Newt feels weird, and he can feel Hermann's discomfort, too, pressing against his ribs. But it's not...bad. New thinks that maybe, maybe, he could get used to it.

~

Their first day together passes slowly, softly. Newt kind of hates it, instinctively—is terrified of anything that is slow and soft, because it only ever precedes disaster. He's restless, fidgety, almost feverish with it, as he has been for days, but it's better with Hermann there with him, looking uncomfortable right alongside him. Every troubled tap of Hermann's toe or spasm of his fingers reminds Newt that he's not alone in this, that he's not the only one feeling lost and confused and anxious. And that makes him feel less of all those things.

So the first day is long, and tiring, and quiet, and kind of hard, but it's better than what Newt's been dealing with. And he eats some real meals, even if they’re still bought from nearby diners because Newt is terrified of cooking anything more complicated than frozen dinners. And he sleeps better than he has been, goes to bed at a reasonable time and feels more settled, more even-keeled. He doesn't have any nightmares.

On the second day, he braves the beach.

They dress in beach clothes, the two of them. Hermann in his new shorts, a light linen blend that show off more thigh than Newt ever in his wildest dreams could have imagined Hermann revealing on purpose, and a soft white button-down that Newt lent him because at least it has short sleeves. He looks summery and vulnerable and cute as fuck. And Newt wears his swim trunks, and a t-shirt that comes off after the first ten minutes as he dares himself to leave his towel on the sand and walk towards the water.

He's sat on the beach a few times, since that first day. Has tried to get along with it. It's not too bad, if he keeps his eyes away from the vast horizon and focused more on the shoreline, the sand under his feet, the gentle waves. It's different from the crashing waves of the Hong Kong coastline, the stinking smell of Kaiju Blue-polluted waters, the death and destruction of the Pacific. It's warm and gentle and soft. If he doesn't think about it too hard.

This is the first time he's gone in deeper than his knees, though. He leaves Hermann reading some book he found in the cottage on the sand, and lets the water lap at his toes, first, and then his ankles. It's kind of cold, this early in the season, but it's nice. It's noon, and the sun is beating down on his head, on his shoulders, and the stark difference in temperature is invigorating. It tempts him farther in. So he takes a few steps, jumps over an incoming wave. Reaches down into the water for a piece of shining beach glass he spots in the sand. Wades farther in, up to his waist, lets the waves push at his chest when they roll through. Tastes saltwater on his lips, feels it cling to his eyelashes when it sprays up into the air.

He left his glasses on the shore, so everything is unfocused, and he feels unbalanced, kind of floaty. It's relaxing, in a way, the rhythmic push and pull of the water. He pushes off the bottom and lets a wave sweep him closer to the shore, and then pull him back out again. He closes his eyes and breathes in the sharp, clean scent of the sea. For once, it reminds him of his childhood more than anything else. Living close enough to the Baltic in Germany that his dad took him pretty often, tossed him into the water while Newt shrieked with joy. Let him buy books about marine life and then go to the beach to try to find specimens, dead or alive. Newt can taste that sense of life and freedom on his saltwater lips.

And then he can also taste it in his nose and throat, as an especially large waves takes him by surprise and bowls him over, knocking him off his feet for a minute before he finds his footing again and stands, coughing through his laughter.

"Newton!" he hears over the crash of waves as water drains from his ears. Panic seizes Newt's chest, and it's not his own. "Newton, _get out_."

Newt turns, blinks. He rubs water out of his eyes and squints to focus as another wave attempts to topple him. Hermann is standing on the shore, five feet from the water, face flushed and eyes wide. His cane is sinking into the sand and he has a wild look about him. Another spike of fear pulses through Newt's chest, and he tries to say, "What's wrong?" but another wave hits Newt in the back of the head and he goes under a second time, spluttering. It's getting hard to breathe, now, and Newt doesn't know what's going on, but as he scrambles closer to the shore to avoid the next wave he feels it.

He feels that same gut-wrenching fear of the sea he's been feeling all week, that sense memory of seeing something rising up out of the water, that same panic he felt when he saw the little girl sitting under a wave and being sucked in by the undertow. He stands up in waist-deep water, shakes it out of his hair, and says, "Hey, I'm okay."

He's too quiet—Hermann probably doesn't hear him. He's still standing on the shore, breathing hard, and Newt stumbles towards him, onto the sand. Hermann's hand comes out, and Newt reaches for it, lets it wrap around his wrist and squeeze.

"Hey," he says again. "Hermann. It's okay."

Hermann sucks in a deep breath and holds on tight. Newt's legs are shaking, and he doesn't think it's from being knocked over by the waves. Hermann's shaking worse.

"It's okay," he says a third time. "It's the Atlantic, Hermann."

"I know," Hermann rasps, chest heaving.

Newt nods. He knows, too. He always knew. But that didn't stop him from being scared of it. "Let's sit down," he says.

They sit on their towels, side-by-side, Newt dripping and Hermann shaking like a leaf.

"Scary as fuck, right," Newt says softly, just so Hermann knows. Just so he knows that Newt understands.

Hermann swallows thickly and lets go of Newt's arm.

Newt misses the contact. "Don't know why I didn't warn you," he says with a huff. "Guess I hoped you wouldn't have the same reaction as I did." He waits, listens to Hermann's shaky breaths as he looks out over the water. He doesn't like it, but he doesn't want to look at Hermann, make him feel like he's being stared at. "It gets easier, though. Kind of."

"I," Hermann says, voice weak and breathy. "I apologize, I—"

"Herms, seriously. It's fine." Newt reaches out blindly, rests a hand on Hermann's knee. His skin is warm and smooth and Newt imagines he can feel the steady throb of his pulse under it. "Let's just sit."

So they do, as Hermann's breaths even out and the rhythm of the sea lulls them into some sense of calm. Newt can still feel Hermann's anxiety, the lingering traces of his panic, through the ghost drift, so he tries to push steady reassurance back across that link, patience and placidity. Not that any of those things have ever come easily to Newt, but he can make an effort, for Hermann's sake.

Neither of them say anything for a long time. The ghost drift fades—Newt thinks it only really activates under high emotion at this point, and they're both calming down. They breathe, and they watch the sea. They should probably go inside, but they don't. They face their fears.

And when Hermann does speak, it's to say, "I didn't know you had freckles."

Newt blinks, turns to look at him. Hermann is looking at the side of his neck, below where his scruffy facial hair ends, and then his eyes flick up to Newt's face, to his cheeks and nose. His expression is inscrutable.

"Oh," Newt says, catching up belatedly. "Um. Yeah. I...do."

A tiny frown pulls at Hermann's lips. "I've never noticed before."

"They only come out in the sun," Newt says, feeling a little lost, like he's just woken up from a dream. "And I've lived in a lab for five years."

"Ah," Hermann says.

"I used to get really freckly as a kid, all down my arms and shoulders and everything." Newt stretches out his arm towards Hermann, rotates it. His tattoos cover all of his freckles, now. “I haven’t really looked. Are the ones on my face showing?”

Hermann hums the affirmative, and then Newt feels a warm fingertip against the side of his neck, close to where it meets his shoulder. “Here, too,” he says softly. 

Newt feels dizzy, his throat thick and chest tight, just at that simple touch, the drag of Hermann’s fingertip over his skin from, presumably, one freckle to another. Newt wants to close his eyes, melt into it, even as his heart kicks into a faster rhythm. His breath leaves his lungs in a slightly shaky exhale. 

“I’m okay,” he says, without really knowing why. 

“I know,” Hermann says, matching his tone, soft and rough. 

“We’re both okay,” Newt says. 

Hermann hums. “Maybe not.” His finger lifts from Newt’s skin. 

Newt breathes out a laugh, the breeze cold across his still-damp skin. “Maybe not.”

But, he thinks, they will be. Someday.

~

That same evening, they tackle cooking for the first time.

Literally, for the first time. Newt has honestly _never_ really cooked for himself. He went from being fed most meals by his dad to dorm life where all meals were acquired at MIT’s dining hall to the Jaeger Academy and Shatterdomes, where everything was eaten at the mess hall. Whenever he _did_ have to feed himself, he always either ate out or...made himself microwave meals or mac and cheese or whatever else he cut put together with zero skills. There's a reason why he's never exactly been trim around the waist.

Hermann, it appears, has had a similar relationship with kitchens. He doesn't actually say so, but he looks at the stove the same way he always used to look at Newt's experiments, with a combination of disgust and trepidation, and that tells Newt enough. Not that Newt's looking at it any other way.

"We can't eat at restaurants for the rest of our time here," Hermann says, frowning deeply. "That would not be cost efficient."

Newt snorts. "I'm not on vacation to save money, Herms."

"Unless they've been paying you more than they've been paying me, neither of us are rolling in money, Dr. Geiszler," Hermann says tartly.

Newt used to hate when Hermann called him that—mostly because he wielded it like a weapon, as a way to put distance between them—but now, after five years, it feels kind of like a pet name. He grins. "We'll be making millions soon, just you wait. Everyone will be begging us to sign book deals and shit."

Hermann sniffs. "Be that as it may, it's not healthy to always be eating at restaurants."

"Yes, because we've been paragons of health up until now," Newt says.

"We weren't," Hermann agrees. "But things are different now. We have the opportunity to...change."

Newt blinks. "I. I guess."

"So, will you help me make dinner or not?"

Newt really, _really_ can't refuse. "Yeah, man. Sure. I just want you to know that I'm going to be totally useless here."

Hermann leans on his cane and lifts his chin in a challenge, looking like the love of Newt's goddamn life in his shorts and Newt's shirt. "It's just a series of step-by-step instructions," he says. "It's a scientific experiment and we will approach it as such."

_I love you_, Newt almost says. "Yeah, okay. Let's do this."

They make, for some unfathomable reason, gratin dauphinois, which turns out to be scalloped potatoes when Newt looks up a picture. They have potatoes and milk already, so Newt supposes it makes sense, kind of. They could have just made them mashed, but Hermann is never one to back away from a challenge. Or something.

Either way, Hermann sends Newt to the store to pick up a few extra ingredients, and by the time he gets back, Hermann is scowling over a cutting board, attempting to cut potatoes into thin rounds. All of the ones he's already done are all different thicknesses, but Newt doesn't breathe a word, getting garlic out of his shopping back to mince it on another board. That seems pretty foolproof.

The kitchen is mostly quiet around them, apart from murmurs of, "It says not to add the cheese on top until the end," and, "Should I leave this uncovered?" They move around each other easily, shuffling around the small kitchen, bumping hips and reaching hands.

It feels everything and nothing like their shared lab at the Shatterdome. It's a shared space, a workspace that they're forced to navigate side by side, but that's where the resemblance stops. There's no incessant bickering, no scoffing and arguing and eye-rolling, no line down the middle of the room just to keep them from coming to blows. It's just the two of them, working quietly in tandem, making something together. They _never_ did things together in the PPDC. Not until the very end.

It actually...goes pretty okay, all things considered. They drip cheesy milk onto the bottom of the oven and it burns and smokes up the entire cottage, and it's under-seasoned, and some of the thinner potato slices are falling apart while some of the thicker ones are a bit crunchy, but it's _edible_, and that's impressive in Newt's opinion. And they steam some broccoli on the side, and Newt squeezes oranges for fresh juice, because that's the thing to do when you're in Florida. And it's honestly...not the worst meal he's ever had. He had worse in the Shatterdome all the time.

"We're already as good as the PPDC kitchen staff, Herms," Newt says enthusiastically, shoveling food into his mouth.

"I don't think they ever hired trained culinary personnel," Hermann says dryly.

"Sometimes I think the entire kitchen staff was actually a group of demons hired specifically to make sure we weren't enjoying the war too much," Newt says, nibbling at a broccoli floret. It's kind of too salty but it's pleasantly crisp, unlike the over-boiled stuff they served in the mess.

"I think it would have been pretty hard to enjoy the war any significant amount," Hermann says. "Even for a man who dreams of marrying a Kaiju someday."

Newt almost snorts orange juice through his nose. "Well, no chance of that now. My suitors have been crushed."

There's a beat of silence, and then their twin smiles fade.

No more Kaiju. No more war.

Somehow, that's not as much of a relief as Newt knows it should be.

The remainder of their evening is subdued, as they watch a terrible movie on cable and ignore their dishes for as long as possible, until Newt agrees to wash them if Hermann dries them and tries to remember what cabinets they came from. It'd be domestic if they didn't spend it in cold, uncomfortable silence, and for a while, Newt wonders if maybe this was a bad idea after all, being on vacation together. Because it's awkward and he never knows what to say, and he feels like he must be doing something wrong because he's _never_ not known what to say to Hermann. But something is different now—_everything_ is different now—and every word gets stopped up in his throat. And the silence is deafening. And he wonders if maybe he shouldn't have ever told Hermann to come, even as a joke. If maybe they needed a break from each other. If Newt needed a break from Hermann, and being in love with him.

But then he remembers doing this alone for five days, and he thinks about doing this alone _again_ if Hermann were to go, and the thought makes a hard knot pull tight in his stomach. God. He really hates being alone.

Being with Hermann isn't exactly easy. But it's a hell of a lot better than being by himself. And honestly, he thinks it's probably better than being with anyone else.

No one else is in precisely the same situation as Newt is, and this becomes extremely clear that night, at something like two in the morning.

Newt's on the couch again, because he really can't ask Hermann to give up the bed when sleeping on the lab couch used to make him limp more heavily for days. It's bitterly dark in the cottage, and oppressively quiet, and Newt has just jolted awake from a nightmare so guttingly real that his throat aches from screaming, even though he doesn't think he's made a sound. His heart hammers against his ribs hard enough to hurt, and when he closes his eyes all he can see are monsters tearing apart the people he cares about, over and over and over.

He breathes hard into the silence, hair matted against his forehead with sweat, and nearly jumps out of his skin at a clatter of sound from down the hall. But it's just Hermann—it's just Hermann, stumbling out of the bedroom and then into the bathroom, followed by the distinctive sound of retching.

Oh. Newt knows that feeling. He hasn't thrown up from a nightmare yet, but he's come really fucking close, has woken up with his stomach churning from the images flickering behind his eyelids, the hot smell of blood and Kaiju Blue and the sea ingrained into his memory. And that's not even the worst of the things he's seen, heard, _lived_.

What both of them lived.

No one understands Newt and the things he's been through the way Hermann does. No one understands their particular brand of helplessness, no one else has drifted with a fucking Kaiju, no one else has destroyed the exact thing they've spent years trying to understand. Newt lies down on the couch, staring up into the darkness, and listens to Hermann flushing the toilet, the faucet running, Hermann breathing heavily into the silence, and thinks, _we're in this together._ He thinks, _we have no choice but to do this together._

They're sharing fucking dreams. There's no other option but to get through this together.

And yet, he doesn't move as Hermann's breaths slow just down the hall, as he stumbles back to his room and audibly drags himself back into bed. Newt doesn't say anything, and he doesn't move—just reaches across the ghost drift and feels, faintly, Hermann's receding panic, and then his helpless exhaustion. Or maybe that's his own.

He doesn't even know what he _would_ say, or what he would do. And there's still fear gripping his lungs, leftover from the nightmare. There's still terror rooting him to the couch. But even if there wasn't, he would probably stay here, his blanket wrapped around his legs, staring up into the darkness. He doesn't know what he would _do_.

He doesn't fall back asleep for the rest of the night. He dozes off here and there, exhaustion pulling him under but never far below the surface, startling awake each time as if his mind can't handle the risk of another nightmare. And he can feel Hermann lying awake, too. Or at least he thinks he can. He might be making it up, might be delusional, but he feels like he can feel Hermann restless and tired just down the hall, always just on the brink of sleep but never quite getting there, mind plagued with horrors.

Tonight, the ebb and flow of the sea is not soothing. It does not lull him into a sense of steady calmness. It sounds like the rush of blood in his ears, and the pounding of Hermann's heart, and the thrum of terror in Newt's throat that he thinks, sometimes, will never leave him.

But at least. At least. He's not alone in it.

If only he could get himself off the couch.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's in the tags but extra warning in this chapter for nightmares/panic attacks! Stay safe y'all.

Newt and Hermann are both bleary-eyed and exhausted the next day, but neither of them mention it, eating breakfast quietly in the silent kitchen, watching TV on low volume. Every light feels too bright for Newt’s tired eyes, and every joint in his body feels swollen, somehow. But he just smiles, and cracks some dumb jokes that fall flat, and asks Hermann what he wants to do today. 

“Perhaps we could go back into town,” Hermann says quietly, fiddling with the handle of his mug and stretching out his leg. 

Newt doesn’t miss his familiar pained wince. “You feeling okay?”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Newton,” Hermann says gruffly. 

If he’s trying to chastise Newt, he’s clearly out of practice—his tone is almost dulcet compared to how he used to speak to Newt. “You haven’t been doing a very good job for as long as I’ve known you,” he says, quirking a grin. 

Hermann’s brow furrows, and then smooths as he smiles a little, rueful. “I...suppose that’s true.”

“Imagine that,” Newt says. “You, agreeing with me. What has the world come to?”

“Salvation,” Hermann hums, and damn if he isn’t right. 

“Divine deliverance,” Newt sighs in agreement. “Alright, let’s go to town. Did you want something there?”

Hermann shrugs. “I think it would be nice to get out of the house.”

“Spent enough time cooped up,” Newt says with a nod. “Yeah, alright. You need a clean shirt?”

Hermann scowls. “I’m buying more clothes today.”

Newt laughs. “Your fault for only buying a couple things the first time. I told you that your wardrobe would be too hot.”

“No, you told me that I wasn’t allowed out of the house in the clothes I brought.”

“And you listened,” Newt says with a grin, and disappears into the bedroom to find something clean for Hermann to wear. 

He’s honestly kind of sad that Hermann has his heart set on buying his own clothes. It’s been nice, seeing him in Newt’s huge shirts. Too nice, maybe, making Newt feel some type of way every time he looks at Hermann. Okay, maybe this is a good thing. 

They only end up heading out to town in the afternoon, after eating all of their leftovers for lunch and getting sucked into noontime game shows on TV. Newt used to watch them all the time with his dad. It’s remarkably similar, watching them with Hermann, who gets grumpy when Newt guesses an answer right before him. 

But then they’re off, walking to town under the blazingly bright sun, Newt hiding behind his sunglasses and Hermann under a hat he found in one of the closets. It’s a wide-brimmed straw thing, and Newt has the nagging feeling it belongs to a woman, but it looks cute as hell on Hermann, so he doesn’t say anything. 

They spend a long time in town, wandering through the streets, looking at little trinkets in antique shops and perusing books in a used bookstore. Hermann buys a battered murder mystery. Newt realizes he knows nothing about Hermann’s taste. Privately, he looks forward to maybe being able to find out. 

They do end up back in the general store, the only place around here that seems to sell clothes not geared towards rich retirees. Hermann frowns at the racks of gaudy floral print shirts and tacky souvenir slogans. 

“Hermann,” Newt says, picking up a lemon yellow tank top and then spotting the peacock blue tee behind it. “Oh my god, _Hermann_. Can we get these?”

He holds them up for Hermann to see. The first one says, in bright red letters, _SUN’S OUT GUNS OUT._ The latter says, similarly, _SKY’S OUT THIGHS OUT. _

Hermann looks upon them with something like tired horror. “Which one is supposed to be for me?”

“This one,” Newt says, shaking the blue one. “Your shorts are appropriately scandalous.”

“What’s wrong with my shorts?” Hermann says with a sniff. 

“Nothing!” Newt says quickly, just in case he decides to stop wearing them. “Mine are probably shorter. But still. I’m the only one with my guns out.”

“If that’s what you’d like to call them,” Hermann says dryly. 

Newt grins. “I’m buying these for us.”

“You can’t make me wear it,” Hermann says. 

Newt has strong-armed him into the shirt within half an hour. Hermann tucks it into the waist of his shorts, and he looks fucking adorable in it. 

They go out for dinner after a while, lobster rolls right on the pier, and then they walk along and get ice cream at the dock. By then, Newt can tell Hermann is tired—he can feel the dull ache of Hermann’s bad hip in his own bones—so he suggests they sit down, find a bench next to the water with dripping cones in their hands. They watch the water silently, and Newt pays close attention, tries to make sure neither of them is about to dive headfirst into another panic attack. But neither of them do—they just watch the boats bobbing on the water, the people wandering along the dock—and he starts to relax. 

It’s nice, relaxing. He should do it more often. 

It actually starts to feel kind of good, after a while. Once he lets the tension drain out of his shoulders, and feels the breeze on his skin. It’s another beautiful day, warm and sunny without being stiflingly hot, and there’s a pleasant buzz of chatter and seagulls and gentle waves around them, white noise that fills in the gaps without being overwhelming. And Hermann is a warm, steady presence next to him, licking at his ice cream pensively, sun dappling his face through the weave of his hat. 

“I wonder what the pH value of the water is here, so far from the Kaiju attacks,” Hermann says thoughtfully, apropos of absolutely nothing.

Newt really fucking loves him. “I dunno,” he says, grinning. “You think we should test it?”

Hermann hums. “Is that not too similar to work?”

“Nah, I did random experiments like that all the time as a kid. Remember when we used to do science for fun? Or I did, at least.”

Hermann cracks a smile, which makes Newt’s chest go a little tight. “I did too, once. Not testing pH values, though. Mostly things to do with rocks.”

Newt laughs out loud. “That’s so fucking cute. I was all about, like. Frogs and bugs and stuff.”

“I always liked rocks,” Hermann sighs. “And maths. And then robotics.”

“And then back to math, huh,” Newt says. 

“Needs must, and all that,” Hermann says. “Abstract maths were always my strong suit.”

“Yeah? I mean, I figured, but then I heard you wrote Jaeger code, so.”

“My father created the Jaeger program,” Hermann says. “I didn’t exactly have a choice.”

Newt snickers a little, imagining Lars Gottlieb glaring at Hermann as he hunched over a computer to furiously write code. But the image comes a little too easily, almost like it’s close to being the truth, and he stops laughing. “Anyway,” he says quickly. “I totally did spend time testing pH values in bodies of water as a kid. My dad had this kit for, like, the pond or something? And I used to use it all the time, at the creek and the lake and the ocean and stuff. Six-year-old Newt _loved_ that kind of shit.”

Now it’s Hermann’s turn to laugh, soft and amused. “What were you testing for?”

“I don’t even remember. I think I just wanted to know? I always just wanted to know stuff.”

“So not much has changed,” Hermann hums. 

Newt grins, looks out at the ocean. “No, not much.”

There’s a brief silence, but not an uncomfortable one. Newt kind of just basks in it. As weird as it still is—silence, between the two of them—it’s...nice. Peaceful. 

“I wonder if we’d be able to cobble something together to test the water toxicity here?” Hermann says. 

Newt bites down on a smile. “You know me. I love to make stuff out of garbage.”

“It’s just, I’m very curious about what’s been going on in the rest of the world. There’s been no time to read any literature pertaining to the _effects_ of the Kaiju, rather than just...the beasts themselves.”

“I didn’t know ecology was your thing,” Newt says. 

“I’m on vacation,” Hermann says primly. “I’m allowed to pursue whatever strikes my fancy.”

Newt laughs. “That’s the spirit. Yeah, let’s fucking...test some water samples. _God_, we’re nerds.”

“It’s just an idea,” Hermann says, sounding oddly content. “There’s likely already research on the matter, but it might be interesting to look at ourselves. I wonder if there might be a chart mapping Kaiju Blue through ocean currents—”

“Hermann, you’re dripping,” Newt interrupts with a grin, watching melted ice cream trickle down the side of his cone and onto his fingers. 

“Oh.” Hermann blinks, snapping out of his thoughtful daze and frowning. He looks around, holding his cone away from his lap. “Ah, I don’t have any—”

“I got you,” Newt says, laughing as he pulls Hermann’s hand towards himself and starts wiping at the drips of ice cream with the napkins he got at the stand. His instinct is to lick it off, but he stops himself in time, steals a lick from the cone instead before it melts right off.

“Hey,” Hermann protests without heat. 

“Your fault for taking so long to eat it, I finished mine like five minutes ago,” Newt says, trying to rub the stickiness off Hermann’s fingers. He steals another lick, and then glances up at Hermann with a mischievous smirk.

Hermann is staring right back at him, closer than Newt had anticipated. There’s a heavy moment of breathless tension.

“...Anyway,” Newt says, clearing his throat and leaning back. “These sound like some really fun dates we’re planning—”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and Newt knows it the second it’s out of his mouth. But it doesn’t help that Hermann tenses up immediately, his entire body going stiff, palpable where his wrist is still clutched in Newt’s hand. He lets go like he’s been burned, eyes flicking to Hermann’s face and then quickly away. God, fuck, _shit_. He’s such a moron. 

“Sorry,” he says, too quickly. “I know that’s not— We’re not— Sorry.” _Shit._

Hermann sniffs and turns to look stolidly out at the sea. “Ah,” he says, and that’s it. 

Briefly, Newt contemplates throwing _himself_ into the sea. Serves him right for ruining a perfectly good moment. 

Not that there was a moment. Or ever would be. Hermann made that perfectly clear, four years ago. 

“I know that’s not what we’re about,” Newt says with a horribly forced laugh. He really just…_fucking_ needs to shut up. But at the same time, saying something—making things worse himself—is still. It’s still better than Hermann turning him down, again. Newt knows he shouldn’t get his hopes up, and he doesn’t. He _doesn’t_. Hermann made himself clear, just like Newt did, back then. And Newt...respects that. He does. It’s just. It’s hard, and painful. When Newt is so in love with him and Hermann is...Hermann. And things are so hopeless. 

But it’s fine. Newt’s been dealing with this for four years. A fucking lot of things are different now, but that’s the same, and. He can deal with that. He’s an adult. 

He coughs, and smiles, and stands. “Anyway, let’s go. I’m tired. We should go home.”

“Ah,” Hermann says again. “Right. Let’s go.”

He holds out his hand, and without thinking, Newt hauls him upright from the bench. He’s done it a hundred times, but today Hermann’s hands are sticky, and warm, and Newt has to swallow down his heart in his throat before he can force himself to let go. 

It’s fine. They’re friends. That’s...more than enough.

~

Rain brings a very different feeling to southern Florida.

So far, since Newt arrived at the cottage, the weather has either been beautiful and sunny or absolutely pouring rain. But on their fifth day together—Newt’s eleventh day in Florida, total—a soft rain starts falling from the sky in the early morning, and it continues for the rest of the day, steady and soothing. It transforms the whole world, somehow, that fine shower of rain. Dulls everything, washes out all of the glaringly bright colours, softens all the edges. A cool breeze blows in off the sea, and Newt likes the feel of it on his skin when he steps out onto the porch, so he opens all the windows, lets it blow through the cottage. It doesn’t smell like the ocean; instead, like cool rain, like fresh cut grass, like ozone and the sunrise. 

They stay inside all day, and Newt doesn’t mind it, not today. He sits on the couch with his laptop and a tall glass of lemonade to watch YouTube videos about shitty paranormal investigations and conspiracy theories from four years ago, and he listens to Hermann putter around the house, tidying like he's Newt's eighty-year-old grandmother visiting his dorm room. It's kind of cute, and it makes Newt smile fondly, and it's just. It's exactly what Newt was doing before Hermann got here, but with the added benefit of being keenly aware that he's not alone. And that's just so much better than the alternative on so many levels. And it's _Hermann_. Despite their many, many moments of antagonism in Hong Kong, Newt has always preferred for Hermann to be there with him.

They don't talk much, though, and Newt thinks that's probably good, after...yesterday's events. He'd tried to keep quiet after that, a little more distant. He feels stupid, after making himself so obvious, and he can't help that heavy feeling of regret in his stomach, knowing Hermann must know, he _must_ know Newt still— But he's put it behind himself. Hermann hasn't said anything, and Newt is grateful. He can pretend nothing ever happened.

It's still best that he stay quiet today. He chatters a little over lunch, because he's never been good at keeping his fucking mouth shut when there is a pair of ears in listening range, and even worse when it's Hermann. But he keeps it light, inane, honestly kind of nonsensical. Hermann responds only with lightly scathing comments and wry smiles. It's very normal. Newt appreciates that.

But after lunch he finds himself back on the couch, now listening to a pre-K-Day podcast about aliens in human history. He plays sixteen rounds of Solitaire and is halfway through a chess match when he starts drifting off, eyelids heavy and reactions slow. He sniffs, lies down with his neck propped up on the arm of the couch and his laptop on his stomach. He moves a bishop to take out his opponent's knight.

Next thing he knows, there's a massive, scaly foot coming down through his roof, and the walls are coming down around him, and Newt is back in Hong Kong, in the Bone Slums, watching Otachi reach for him with her long, dripping tongue, the stench of rotting fish thick in his throat, blood pounding through his veins. And he's two feet away from a baby Kaiju's maw, mere seconds after watching it swallow a man whole. And he's scared, he's so fucking scared, and he needs to stop them, he needs to understand them, they're killing people, they're going to take over the world, and Newt's the only person who knows them. And his head is pounding and he can barely see through his left eye and his right glasses lens in cracked and the panic is choking him because he's going to die, he's going to die alone here in the middle of Hong Kong in the pouring rain, the sound of it beating steadily against his temples, the scent of clean water lost behind the smell of rubble and blood and death and destruction.

The patter of rainfall turns to the roar of a monster. More people are dying. Blood is spilling in the streets. Jaws are snapping, feet are falling, buildings are crumpling under unbelievable weight, and it's Newt's fault, because he's supposed to stop it, and he can't, he can't, he's scared stiff and there's nothing left he can do except scream.

He can feel the Kaiju, the Precursors in his head. Pressing against his skull from the inside, so hard it makes him want to throw up. The Hivemind, sinking into the soft matter of his brain, claws reaching deep into it, holding tight. He's the only one who knows them, but they know him, too. They want him. They want to take him. They won't let him go.

He jerks awake with a gasp that edges on a sob, sitting up on the couch and clutching at it, breathing hard through a raw throat. His ribs ache, and his vision goes blurry. He looks around wildly, trying to remember where he is, what he's doing, how many seconds he has left until he's crushed under two point seven thousand tons of weight.

All he sees is Hermann, standing in the kitchen, watching him with eyes that are at once worried and knowing. Newt swallows thickly, and tries to catch his breath.

Neither of them say anything. They've gotten good at that, recently. Just...pretending things don't exist, so that they don't have to deal with them. Newt's a pro at it, and Hermann's not too shabby himself.

Newt's laptop is on the coffee table next to the couch, his glasses set carefully on top, and he's definitely not the one who put them there. There's a crocheted blanket wrapped around his legs. More things they will never talk about.

Newt blows out a slow breath. "Supper?" he croaks.

"I was thinking of making a risotto," Hermann says softly.

"Better than the Shatterdome's?" Newt asks.

Hermann smiles a little, crooked and tired. "Better than the Shatterdome's."

"Okay." Newt clears his throat, slides his glasses back onto his face. His heart still hasn't stopped hammering against his ribs; he still hasn't stopped smelling blood. His head aches so acutely that he worries about his skull cracking under the pressure. "I'm gonna...take a walk."

"It's raining," Hermann tells him.

Newt shakes his head and stands, slips his bare feet into sandals, and walks out the door.

It _is_ still raining, soft and grey. Not at all like that night in Hong Kong, black sky and neon lights and screaming voices. This is cool, and soft, and peaceful. The ocean is grey and swirling, and Newt keeps his eyes away from it as he lets the water soak into his hair, into his clothes, into his skin. He breathes in cool, damp air, and lets it soothe over the sharp edges of his headache. He breathes in the sweet smell of it. He sits down on wet sand and closes his eyes and just lets it fall on him.

He's alive. He's here. He went through hell, and he came out the other side of it more or less intact. That's more than...a lot of people can say.

He made it out alive. The least he can do is not disrespect those who didn't by falling apart.

"Newton," a voice calls into the rain. "You'll catch your death out there."

Newt smiles a little. "Yeah," he says, probably not loud enough for it to carry. "I'll be right in."

He has no idea how long he stayed outside, but by the time he steps back into the cottage, there's something cooking on the stove that smells delicious, and he's dripping wet. Newt takes a long shower in warm water, changes into dry clothes, and by the time he's out, Hermann's risotto is ready.

It's probably not very good, probably not cooked quite right and not seasoned enough, but to Newt, in that moment, it's the most delicious thing he's ever put in his mouth. Hermann smiles when Newt says so, bashful and quiet.

"You're not bad at this cooking thing," Newt says, poking his spoon into his bowl. "You should cook for me when we go back to the Shatterdome."

Both of them tense up the second he says it. Newt feels it thrum between them. It’s the first time either of them have mentioned going back to work, and honestly, Newt doesn’t know how to handle it. He hasn’t even been away two weeks, and suddenly work feels very far away, like another lifetime entirely. Going back is...simultaneously terrifying and inviting. He’s not ready, and at the same time he just wants to feel something familiar again. He’s restless and on edge and tired all the time, scared all the time, and he was all of those things before, too, but. At least it was familiar. And now he’s adrift. And he keeps having nightmares. 

But there’s also the matter of Newt talking about it like it was a given, the two of them going back together, them being a unit. He shouldn’t talk like that. They’re not...they’re not an _item_. Professionally or otherwise. They never even worked together, not until the very end of things. There’s no reason why they should both return to the same Shatterdome, the same lab. Is there?

Newt clears his throat and turns back to his bowl. “I just mean. It’s good. Been a while since I ate good food.” Good home-cooked food, he wants to clarify. Food cooked with love. He does not say that. He’s said enough already. 

They watch a movie in the evening, sitting on opposite ends of the couch in the dark. The movie’s a couple years old, about time travel or something, and Newt loses the thread of the plot almost immediately. He’s still tired—he’s always fucking tired—and his head still hurts, and there’s still an ache in his chest left over from the nightmare. That feeling has barely left him since the say the Breach closed. 

God. It’s been, what, three weeks? Almost a month. And Newt knows that isn’t a lot, that it’s alright that he still feels like he’s reeling, but it’s just. It’s so much, all the time. He’s never sleeping enough. He has trouble concentrating. He’s moody, and he feels unbalanced. Every moment of peace is undermined by a sense of tension, by a need to move, to prepare for disaster. Adrenaline addiction, he thinks vaguely. He’s going through a withdrawal. And PTSD, maybe. God, he doesn’t know. His head just feels so fucked up. And this _fucking_ Ghost Drift. He can still feel it. And his head fucking _hurts_. 

Newt doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Go back to work, eventually. At the—at the Shatterdome, probably. He’ll. He’ll find something. The Kaiju are gone—they’re _gone_—but he’ll find something. Write a book, or, or do more experiments on the samples they have left, just in case the Kaiju come back, they’ll give him funding just in case the Kaiju come back, won’t they? But what—what—what if he never sleeps normally again. He hasn’t been sleeping for almost a decade now but he can’t do that forever. What if the nightmares plague him forever. What if he can never go back to the Pacific. 

He sighs into the darkness, cradles his head in his hands. Maybe he should see a psychologist, or something. A therapist. God, _yeah_, he could probably use some fucking therapy. 

There’s a lull in the movie, and Hermann’s voice lifts above the soundtrack to say, “Alright?”

Newt huffs, rubs his hands over his face. “Yeah. Tired.”

“Would you like me to— I mean, you could take the bed. Tonight.”

“No,” Newt says quickly. “No, it’s fine. I’m okay. You go to bed whenever you want, I’m— I won’t be falling asleep anytime soon anyway.”

He knows Hermann understands why. He knows Hermann, if he didn’t share the dream firsthand, at least felt Newt’s terror during it and immediately following. 

But he doesn’t say anything, just nods and turns back to the TV. Newt isn’t sure if he’s grateful or not. 

But Hermann stays up. He doesn’t go to bed, not until the movie is over and the entire cottage is dark. He stays there with Newt, on the couch, and afterwards they chat a little bit in the pitch blackness, about the movie neither of them really understood, about movies they saw when they were younger. Just pointless stuff. Stuff that makes Newt forget, for a little while. 

They don’t talk about anything important. But maybe that’s okay, for right now. Maybe that’s what Newt needs. 

He’s not sure even he believes that. But it helps, regardless. And Newt’s grateful. He’ll take anything that will help right now.

~

The days drag on along the coast of Florida, the sun rising and falling over the ocean, and neither Newt nor Hermann mentions Hong Kong, or ending their vacation.

Newt knows they’ll have to, eventually. That they’ll feel obligated to, as the only scientists with their particular expertise. And that they’ll want to. That their restlessness will precipitate into a need to start working again, and that they’ll find satisfaction in it, rather than fear and anxiety. That he’ll need it. 

But rather than the restlessness mounting and mounting, as Newt had expected, instead it...fades. 

It stuns Newt, after years and years of incessant, pressing anxiety. It stuns him to feel at peace in any significant, lasting way. 

It would worry him, if he didn’t see the same thing reflected in Hermann. 

He notices it after two weeks in Florida—eight days together. He wakes up having slept, albeit fitfully, through the night, and feels an uncomfortable lightness in his chest. As if getting enough rest disturbs his perpetually sleep-deprived body. He sits up, smelling eggs frying. He looks towards the kitchen. 

Hermann is already up, sitting at the kitchen table with an open book. He’s waiting for the food to finish cooking, and he’s reading, and he’s smiling, just a little bit. He doesn’t know Newt’s awake yet, absorbed in his book, and his shoulders are relaxed, his posture loose and easy. Newt has spent so much time seeing him tense and uptight that he’d almost not been sure Hermann _could_ look like this. 

But it’s nice. Seeing him soft and relaxed like this is nice, it feels _good_. It makes Newt feel more comfortable with his own contentment. 

He gets to his feet, and Hermann’s eyes flick to him, soft and bright. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Newt mumbles thickly. 

“Breakfast?”

Newt could never say no. 

They eat together quietly, the sun streaming softly through the windows. Newt enjoys the slope of Hermann’s shoulders, the softness of his figure, swathed in light cotton, linen shorts. Newt would give anything to kiss him like this. 

The day is warm and breezy, clouds drifting intermittently across the sun. After breakfast Newt goes out to collect seashells to bring home—back to Hong Kong—is Hong Kong home?—and when he comes back, he finds Hermann sitting on the porch swing, one leg tucked up under him, reading there, smiling again. And after Newt spends the early afternoon playing the baby grand piano in the lounge with clumsy hands, he hears Hermann humming soft melodies under his breath as they walk back to town to get groceries, familiar tunes that Newt wrote, once upon a time, in a different life. 

Newt likes playing piano. He used to play keyboard in his shitty band in Boston, used to love letting music fall from his fingertips, chords and arpeggios and sweet tinkling harmonies. It’s been years, now, since he’s been able to. He’s rusty. But it feels good, stretching his hands over the keys again. It feels like release, even when nothing particularly melodic comes out, and it feels like reconnecting with the person he used to be. The Newt he once was, who knew how to enjoy his life. And Hermann seems to like it, too, smiling as Newt settles at the bench. 

He’s been smiling a lot recently, and Newt likes that. Anything that makes Hermann smile must be good, so he doesn’t fight the peace that settles over him, doesn’t let himself do anything to disturb it. Self-sabotage is Newt’s middle name, but for Hermann’s sake, he soaks it in. 

He catches himself watching Hermann, maybe too much. Sneaking glances, lingering when Hermann is otherwise distracted. It’s probably a bad idea, it’s probably masochistic, thinking so much about things he can’t have, but he can’t help but soak in the sight of him like a balm against the raw edge of his anxieties. 

It’s because of this that Newt notices, as Hermann is slowly and methodically making them a carbonara dinner, Hermann shaking his hair away from his eyes distractedly. It happens when he’s leaning over his pot of pasta, and again when he’s grating cheese, humming softly. He notices it for a third time while they’re eating, Hermann flicking his head to the side to shake his fringe back. 

“I think you need a haircut, dude,” Newt says, grinning broadly. 

Hermann blinks at him in confusion, and Newt mimics his little hair shake. Newt’s hair is so thick that if he runs his hand through it, it stays back by itself. Hermann’s hair is a lot finer. 

Hermann huffs a laugh. “Maybe I do. I’ve let it grow out a touch longer than I’m used to.”

“I can cut it for you,” Newt offers, because he’s a moron. 

Hermann frowns. “There’s no need, I can do it myself.”

Newt lets his smile grow crooked. “Evidence suggests you cannot.”

Hermann stares at him for a moment, a quip obviously on the tip of his tongue, and then he, too, cracks a smile. “I suppose you’re right.”

He’s been doing that a lot, lately. Agreeing with Newt. Newt’s not sure if it’s because he’s finally loosened up enough to admit that Newt can, in fact, be right sometimes, or if it’s for Newt’s sake—if he thinks Newt needs it, somehow. Either way, it’s as unnerving as it is gratifying. 

Newt’s not sure what to make of his acquiescence, now. He _definitely_ hadn’t expected Hermann to say yes. 

But he did, and now he’s looking at Newt expectantly, so Newt slaps his palms down on the table and says, “Alright then, finish eating and then wet your hair.”

Newt’s never actually cut hair, not even his own. Every few months, he’d cut a lunch break short and then slip out into the streets of Hong Kong, to the closest salon still standing this close to the coast. Get it cut shorter than he liked it, and then let it grow out until it was too annoying to live with anymore. He’d never really trusted himself with scissors. 

But he trusts himself more than he trusts Hermann, whose hair always looks like he cut it in the dark or got overzealous with the clippers, so he looks up a YouTube tutorial, raids the bathroom for tools. 

He has steady, meticulous hands and knows how to handle sharp equipment, at the very least. And he knows how to keep calm—or some semblance of calm; he knows how to get the job done—under pressure. And this will be important, he realizes, as soon as he moves to stand behind Hermann where he’s sitting in a chair in the kitchen, waiting. 

It is _shockingly_ more intimate than Newt had anticipated. They’ve been close before—they’ve embraced—they’ve been inside each other’s heads—but this is...something else. This is _domestic_. This is Newt standing up against Hermann’s back, hands hovering over his head because he’s a little bit scared to touch him, because it might be too much. 

But he has to, eventually. It’s too late to back out now. So he drapes a towel around Hermann’s shoulders and tips his head back with fingertips on Hermann’s temples, runs his fingers assessingly through soft, fine fair. 

Hermann shivers a little. Newt tucks the towel more firmly around him, and wonders if he should turn down the A/C. 

And then he gets to work, trying desperately to focus on the task at hand. It’s not easy, with Hermann’s warm scalp under his hands, and Hermann humming softly with what can only be pleasure. But Newt is a professional, he’s been dealing with temptation for a long, long time. He swallows hard, stays behind Hermann, and starts snipping. 

He doesn’t really have any goal, other than to make Hermann’s hair shorter and less of an unflattering disaster. But he cuts it all to mostly the same length at the top, and a little shorter on all he sides, trims the edges and snips the fine hair at his nape close to the skin. He tips Hermann’s head this way and that with gentle, sweaty hands, and runs his fingers through the top to make it all stand on end. 

It’s weird and too intimate and kind of funny, honestly, as Newt bites back laughter every time he accidentally snips something shorter than he meant to, and Hermann threateningly says, “Newton, if you’re doing something disgraceful to my head—” but it’s also just kind of sweet, in an awkward and ungainly sort of way. It’s Newt doing something for Hermann because he can, and Hermann letting him. 

He relaxes, and finishes up his haircut, which looks better than he thought it would, if he’s being honest. He pretends to be snipping away individual hairs that escaped his wrath the first time, but mostly is just enjoying the soft, silky feel of Hermann’s hair under his fingers. Hermann hums again, and Newt grins and gives him a little scalp massage, just to be obnoxious. 

“Feels nice,” Hermann says, tipping his head back with fluttering eyelids.

For just a moment—for the first time since he sat down—their eyes meet. Hermann smiles. 

Something wells up in Newt’s chest, and nearly chokes him. It’s so sudden and so strong that it makes Newt panic, heart in his throat. He snatches his hands away, takes a step back. _Shit_. He’s doing it again. Letting himself get too close. He’s—he’s touching too much, looking too much, loving Hermann too much. _Fuck_. There’s a line, there’s a line that Hermann drew four years ago as clearly as he drew the line down the center of their lab. And Newt has been much more careful about not overstepping the metaphorical line than the physical one. He’s not going to fuck everything up now. 

“Well,” he says quickly, brushing his hands on his shorts. “All done. You look— Um, good. If I do say so myself.”

“Of course you do,” Hermann says, but his voice holds an edge of uncertainty, almost discomfort. “Newton—”

Newt flashes a grin that he definitely won’t see, facing away from Newt as he is. “I’m gonna go— Take a shower. Hair all over me. Feel free to admire your new ‘do in the meantime. Sorry if you hate it.”

And he retreats, because that’s all he _can_ do. Toe the line, and then retreat. Better than overstepping and ruining everything. 

That’s what he tries to tell himself, at least.

~

Newt doesn't know his nightmares could get worse until they do.

He's always aware, in a detached way, that he's dreaming. When there are monsters rising up out of the sea and he's watching people die over and over in front of his eyes, he always knows at least a little bit that it's not real. That it's familiar because it's in the past, that it seems real because it was, once.

His nightmares have always been replays of things he’s already seen, either firsthand or on the news or in the Drift. They're never anything completely new, even if they're strange amalgamations of past horrors, memories twisted into something still recognizable, even in its Frankensteined monstrousness.

On Newt's sixteenth night, that's not what happens.

It starts out vague, fuzzy around the edges, drenched in blue like a Drift. Roiling seawater, silhouettes of city skylines Newt's never seen before, flashing lights, the scrape of metal. And then everything gets sharp and bright and real, people screaming, pain searing. Deaths he never saw, in electrically vivid detail. The Kaidonovskys, choking on saltwater, gasping for air. Weighed down by their suits, still hooked up to Cherno Alpha as it sinks underwater. The pulse of a suppressed explosion, and then suffocating stillness. Newt never saw their battle with Otachi and Leatherback. He never wanted to. He doesn't want to see it, now.

And it doesn't stop there. The Wei triplets, taken out and cast aside like their deaths mean nothing. The shivery moment before Striker Eureka's suicide detonation. Pain, and pain, and pain.

Not theirs. Not the humans'. The Kaiju's. Newt feels it, he feels the agony of Gipsy Danger's sword rending through armoured flesh, the searing heat of the plasma cannon, burning through Newt's skin. He feels water choking his lungs, and the taste of corrosive blue acid in his mouth.

On this night, no Kaiju tries to rip Newt out of an emergency bunker, no Kaiju tries to snap him clean in half with its underdeveloped jaws. On this night, Newt _is_ the Kaiju, all of them at once, sucked into the Hivemind, living out every single death under his own hands. He's attacking San Francisco and Sydney and Tokyo, he's crushing buildings and bodies under his feet, he's paving the way for the rest of his kind. And he feels powerful, he feels victorious, even as Jaegers tear him down, gut him and crush him under hard steel. He is doing his duty, he is carrying out his mission. He is preparing the way.

It's more terrifying than anything Newt has ever experienced. It's more terrifying than the Drifts, it's more terrifying than being pinned under the eyes of a monster. Newt _is_ the monster. And he likes it. He has no choice but to like it. He's being pulled in, he's part of the Hivemind, there's nothing left of him except the mission, the endless struggle towards the end goal. Domination. Colonization. This is his new home.

It's not, it's not. It already is. Earth is his home, and he risked his life to protect it. To save it. Newt clings to that, desperately, but his thoughts are smothered, choked out. There's only the mission. The mission. Newt is part of it. He could be part of it still. He could—he could help. He can feel the satisfaction of it. He could be needed. He could do something—shake off that relentless sense of emptiness and be someone. He could, he could. He has to.

The Hivemind presses against his skull, curls around it and squeezes. Expands from the base of his skull and outwards, presses in from the outside, so much pressure from every side. Newt screams. He doesn't want to, he doesn't want to. They don't have him—they don't. The Breach has been sealed. The Kaiju are gone. They don't— He can't. He won't.

He sees Hermann, the two of them, Drifting together. He sees Hermann pulling the Pons headset off of him the first time. Cutting his connection with the Hivemind. For a moment, blindly, Newt hates him for it. They’re not his own feelings—he was relieved, he’s _relieved_—but they cloud his mind like they are, paint his blue-tinged memories red with rage. Hermann did this. Took the Kaiju, the Precursors away from him. 

_Kill him_, a voice snakes through his thoughts. _You could end him._

No. No. He can’t. He won’t. 

He has to.

Newt wakes up gasping for air, shaking harder than he ever has in his life. His head is throbbing and his stomach is churning and he can feel tears on his cheeks, the surface of his pillow wet and cold. Newt’s bones are rattling, joints aching and muscles cramping, and there’s a part of him that thinks he might be seizing, the shaking so strong and uncontrollable. A sob crawls out of his constricted throat. 

The cottage is too dark, and too quiet. Newt’s hands are clumsy, fumbling as he struggles out of the grabbing confines of his blanket, off the couch. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and for a second that’s scary, for a second he thinks he’s not in control of himself. But then he feels the deep, gutting driving force behind his movement, and it’s not rage, it’s not intent to kill, although he still feels that somewhere deep in his stomach. No—it’s fear. It’s the absolute terror of being alone. He can’t trust himself alone. He needs to not be by himself. 

He stumbles to his feet, and down the dark hall, still choking on shuddering breaths and suffocating horror. He can feel Hermann there, in the bedroom, a warm presence still connected to Newt’s mind, somehow. Newt follows it blindly, pushes through the doorway. 

In the faint light of the moon coming in through the window, Newt can see the shape of Hermann sitting up in bed, looking at him. 

Newt doesn’t dare meet his eyes, scared and ashamed and shivering. He just trips towards the bed and climbs into the side closest to the door, Hermann firmly on the other side as if he can’t take the entire thing. Newt shakes as he crawls under the heavy blanket, curls up on his side with his eyes closed tightly, facing Hermann but not looking at him. He draws a hitched breath and tries to open his mouth to say something, but all that comes out is a soft, wheezy noise that edges on a whine. 

He almost startles out of his skin when he feels a warm hand rest gently on his shoulder. He feels it like it’s wrapped around his throat. “I—” he says, and then chokes. 

“Shhh,” Hermann says, shifting on the mattress, his voice quiet and soothing in the roaring silence. “It’s alright.”

Newt shakes his head against his pillow, and a tear leaks out, drips down to the pillowcase. 

“It’s alright,” Hermann says again, fingers curling around Newt’s shoulder, holding him steady, grounding him. “It was only a dream.”

“It’s— I—” He sucks in a shuddering beath. “They’re— They’re in my _head—_” 

He isn’t sure if Hermann will understand—doesn’t know how much Hermann saw, if he shared this dream—but Hermann just shushes him gently, says, “They’re not, Newton, they’re gone.”

For the briefest of moments, Newt hates him for that. The thought nearly makes him cry out. “They’re not, I, I feel them—”

“It’s a Ghost Drift, darling, that’s all. They don’t have you, you’re safe.”

A strangled sound crawls out of his throat, and Newt feels Hermann’s hand stroking up and down his arm. “Why— Why—” He struggles to find his voice. “Why am I— so fucking Drift Compatible with them?”

“You understand monsters, Newton,” Hermann says softly. “That doesn’t mean you are one.”

Newt sobs and presses his face into his pillow. 

“Hush now,” Hermann says, and Newt can feel him shifting closer, but feels nothing other than the desperate need to not be alone, relief at Hermann not leaving. “You’re alright. You’re here. You’re safe.”

Newt kind of disassociates after that, feels like he’s not completely in his own body, or maybe that’s just the sensation of falling back into unconsciousness. All he knows is that he’s warm, and anchored, and he feels, in a detached way, Hermann’s soft, dry palm on his arm, along his side. He feels gentle fingers brushing the hair back from his wet eyes, a thumb wiping dampness from his cheek. He’s not sure if any of that is real—not sure if he’s slipped back into another dream—but even if it isn’t, he doesn’t care. Any dream or intrusive thought or hallucination that’s not about death or destruction is fine by him. 

He’s not sure when he falls asleep, or even if he does at all. All he knows is the folding darkness around him, at once soothing and terrifying, and the warm comfort of Hermann next to him, watching over him. Newt is safe if Hermann is here. Hermann won’t let anything happen, won’t let Newt do anything. Hermann has always been right there with him, watching out for him. Newt gives himself up to him completely. 

He must sleep, though, because he wakes up some indeterminate amount of time later, to sunlight streaming in through the window. 

He blinks his eyes open, his lashes clumped with dried tears and his lids aching, but feeling surprisingly well-rested. He groans softly, rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes, blinks a few times. 

The smudge of colour in front of him materializes into a face—Hermann’s face, fast asleep next to him on the bed. Newt breathes out slowly, stares without moving. He knows he should probably feel embarrassed, should probably crawl out of bed before Hermann wakes up and never bring this up again, but he doesn’t. He’s warm, and he’s comfortable, and he feels...safe. 

And Hermann is just sleeping there, looking soft and peaceful and perfect, his face slack with sleep and one hand lying on the mattress between them, like half of a reach. And Newt remembers, with a vagueness that makes him wonder if he imagined it, Hermann calling him _darling_. Remembers the warmth of his hands on Newt’s skin, and the steady gentleness of his voice, the same voice that screamed at Newt for five years, and then croaked to him late at night when both of them were too tired to be angry anymore. The furrow between his brows is smoothed out in sleep, and his hair falls softly across his forehead, his eyelashes fanning prettily over razor-sharp cheekbones. Newt barely even looked at him last night, when he was shaking with fear and crawling into Hermann’s bed without asking. So he looks his fill now. At the weird, beautiful sum of him. He exhales shakily. 

God. Newt loves him so much. 

And then he slides out of the bed and into the bathroom, because he’s not panicking anymore, he can’t feel anyone else in his head anymore, and that means it’s time to keep right on living. For once, Newt feels like it won’t be that hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (We're ignoring that Hermann's hair in the movie was not that long and wouldn't grow out That Much in 3-ish weeks. Just roll with it okay.)


	4. Chapter 4

Newt tries to pretend the nightmare and the bed-sharing didn’t happen, which is hard when the images are still imprinted on the backs of his eyelids, and he can still feel the ghost of Hermann’s hands on his skin. But he keeps quiet, doesn’t voice any of the lingering terror he still feels. Just gets up, makes breakfast for Hermann when he gets up, smiles at him like everything is fine and he’s not still thinking about the warmth of Hermann’s skin. Doesn’t even apologize for barging into Hermann’s room in the middle of the night and climbing into his bed without permission, because that would require acknowledging it happened. 

But he doesn’t really think the apology is necessary, anyway. Maybe he’s being presumptuous, but he had—he had _known_ Hermann would let him in. And that if Hermann hadn’t wanted him there, he would have just kicked Newt out the second he stopped...crying. God, how embarrassing. 

But he’s forcefully putting it out of his mind, and Hermann’s not saying anything either, just sitting down across from him and eating the scrambled eggs Newt made, spreading butter and jam on his toast. 

He looks tired, but not in the miserable way he always used to. He just looks sleepy, and soft, and warm, and Newt has a sudden jolt of dread at the thought of them going back to the Shatterdome and never getting to see Hermann like this again. Never getting to make him breakfast again and see him in his pajamas and the way his hair sticks up before he’s had a chance to properly flatten it. God, Newt just loves him so much for no reason. 

It’s that thought—that moment of remembering that they’ll go back to the Shatterdome someday, probably someday _soon_, not that he loves Hermann, which is just his constant state of being—that prompts Newt to say, “How do you feel about going back to the beach today?”

A look of concern passes through Hermann’s eyes, his fork halting halfway to his mouth. “Are you...sure?”

Newt bites his lip, nods. “I mean. We’re here for the beach, right? And I have to...I have to see that there’s nothing bad in there.”

Hermann hums, lowers his fork back to his plate. “Except the usual things,” he says. “Sharks. Poisonous jellyfish. The like.”

Newt grins. “Oh, Hermann. How _dare_ you call sharks bad.”

“You’re the one who was implying, just a moment ago, that Kaiju are ‘_bad_,’” Hermann reminds him. 

The smiles drops from Newt’s lips. “Oh,” he says, and thinks about that. He _had_ said that, and...and he’s been thinking it. That the Kaiju are the enemy. Years and years of being a staunch Kaiju apologist, of advocating for the fact that while they did need to be stopped, they were animals, killing out of instinct rather than ill intent, just as sharks only bite because it’s their nature, because there are strange creatures in their ocean. Years of that, and now here he is, calling them bad like everyone else. Just because of a few nightmares. 

He sighs. “You’re right,” he says. “I— They’re not bad. They were just...doing their jobs. They didn’t have a choice.” He still remembers the Hivemind in his head, the urge to destroy, almost impossible to push away. And that was from two measly Drifts. 

Hermann seems to remember it too, because his expression is soft, understanding. “I know,” he says. “Let’s go back to the beach. To see that there is nothing bad in it.”

Newt smiles, and hurries to finish his breakfast before he says something stupid. 

Twenty minutes later, Newt has pulled on his swim trunks, and is shaking out his beach towel on the sand next to Hermann’s, some ten feet from the edge of the waves lapping at the shore. The sun is out, but it’s still early in the morning, the breeze cool and sweet. Too chilly to go into the water just yet, so Newt sits down on his towel, stretches out his legs and tips his face up towards the sun. Lets it warm his skin, drinks it in as he listens to the soft crash of waves and the cries of the seagulls wheeling overhead. He likes it so much that he peels off his shirt, tries to feel the sun on more of him. 

“Happy?” Hermann says, and it makes Newt’s eyes burn a little. Just that single word, Hermann asking him if he’s happy. And the fact that Newt _is_, just in that moment. He _is_ happy, sitting with the sun on his skin with Hermann there beside him, listening to a sea that is no longer full of horrors. 

“Yeah,” Newt breathes, soft and peaceful. 

There’s a stretch of silence, and then Hermann says, “You should put on sunblock. You’ll get a burn.”

Newt hums, reaches out his hand without opening his eyes. He knows Hermann always has the sunblock on him. 

It doesn’t come. “I can do it. For you.”

“Oh,” Newt says. He blinks his eyes open, swallows hard. “Um, you don’t have to—”

“You won’t be able to reach all down your back,” Hermann says. “Let me.”

Unable to think up an excuse why he shouldn’t, and secretly desperate for Hermann’s hands on him again even though he knows it’s dangerous, Newt says, “Okay.”

He turns so that his back is to Hermann, and then bites back a yelp as a cold finger touches his shoulder blade. Hermann drags the lotion across Newt’s back, slow and gentle, and Newt goes dizzy, tucking his knees up to his chin to hide any...embarrassing reactions. Hermann’s palms are warm to offset the cold of the lotion, and sure, careful, moving with confident precision across Newt’s skin. It feels absolutely sensual in a way it has no right to, and Newt really wishes Hermann would just slap it on like Newt does, but at the same time he _really_ doesn’t. God, if Newt giving Hermann a haircut felt like this, it’s a wonder either of them made it out of there alive. 

Hermann doesn’t breathe a word the entire time, rubbing sunblock into him, lower and lower on his back until Newt is biting his lip hard enough to hurt. He jerks a little bit as Hermann slides his hand just above the waistband of Newt’s shorts, and Newt clears his throat hastily and grabs the bottle from him to start rubbing lotion on his chest and arms, just to get it over with faster. God, shit, Hermann must be able to see how red his ears are. 

But Hermann doesn’t seem to be looking at his ears, because a second later there’s a press of skin against the back of Newt’s neck, a single fingertip dragging over twitching skin, and Hermann says, in a voice so low Newt almost misses it, “Your freckles are getting darker.”

Newt has to swallow twice before he can squeak, “Are they?”

Hermann just hums, letting two more fingertips join the first, brushing over the skin of his nape. Newt bites back a whimper. The fingers travel to the top of his shoulder, and Hermann says, “You can even see some of them through the yellow parts of your tattoo here.”

Newt nods, because he can’t trust himself to speak. He hadn’t actually known that—he’s not sure he’s spent enough time in the sun since he got the tattoos to find out. 

“It’s quite fetching,” Hermann says, and Newt bolts up to his feet, unable to take it for a moment longer. 

“Thanks for the, um, help,” Newt says without looking back at him, and drops his glasses on his towel so that he can throw himself into the sea. 

If Hermann was trying to convince him to face his fears head-on, he did a very good job of it. 

Once he’s waist-deep in the water, though, he’s able to forget about it, kind of. He’s still shivering from the memory of Hermann’s fingertips on his skin, but now he’s also shivering from the breeze snaking over the places where he’s been sprayed by seawater. And he’s letting his hands drag through the waves, looking through to the seabed, where he's digging his toes into the sand. He’s watching the water swirl around him, and he’s squinting to see the tiny creatures swimming through the lapping waves, miniscule fish and sealife. He crouches in the water, lets his face come closer to the surface to peer into it. He stays very still, and sees more creatures wriggling through the water. Fish the size of his thumb, and little crustaceans burrowing into the seabed, and insects and arthropods and swaying plants. 

It makes Newt’s throat close up for a minute, in a good way. This is just one tiny little piece of the whole, vast ocean, and it’s teeming with life. Not much had been able to survive Kaiju Blue pollution in the area surrounding fallen Kaiju in the Pacific. But here, far away from that, there’s still so much life. And Newt thinks, for a second, about the sheer enormity of the sea, and the interconnectedness of all the oceans, all the waterways, of the bays and streams linking this quiet, peaceful, idyllic piece of the beach to the horror of the shores of Hong Kong— 

He shakes his head. No, no, he won’t think of that. Or, at least, not in that way. The ocean _is_ huge, and it _is_ connected to the Pacific, but— But that’s not a bad thing. It’s, it’s a miracle, that life goes on. That so much destruction can take place, and still, life goes on. Life finds a way. 

He thinks about this earth, this tiny planet, and all of the terrible things that happened to it in the past twelve years. And he thinks about its resilience, the refusal of its population to just roll over and die. The tenacity of humans, definitely, but also of other life. These fish in this water, that saw the change of the ocean’s makeup after Trespasser polluted it with its blood, and kept right on living. 

Newt thinks about the relentless life within the oceans, and he thinks about how big it is, how much of the oceans are still unexplored. It makes him a little nervous, the not knowing, the mystery. The thought that there could be another Breach out there, somewhere, dormant, and no one would know. Or something else. Something worse. But it’s also amazing. That there could be something out there _better_. A cure for cancer in some undiscovered fish’s blood. The solution to bone regeneration, or, or breaking down plastics, or reversing climate change. So many secrets to unlock. 

And it makes Newt excited, rather than scared. A little of both, but more excited than anything. Eager. This is his earth. And they’ve reclaimed it. He helped to reclaim it. And now he gets to learn more about it, every day, for as long as he lives. 

He returns to the beach after an hour in the water, feeling full and warm and light and completely untraumatized. And he doesn’t know how much of this is spilling over into Hermann’s thoughts, if any, but when Newt trudges back to his towel on the sand, Hermann is looking up at him, face open, eyes bright, mouth curved in a lopsided smile. Newt sits down with his feet buried in warm sand, and feels like he’s glowing.

~

That evening, as night falls and Hermann starts blinking longer and heavier, Newt looks down at the couch that has been his bed for ten of his sixteen nights, and feels dread build in his stomach. He doesn’t want to sleep here, alone in the dark. He doesn’t want to sleep in this place where horrors have haunted him relentlessly. He doesn’t want to sleep in this place that doesn’t feel like a home.

He goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, pulls on his sleep clothes. Peeks into the bedroom, where Hermann is already sitting in his bed, reading against the headboard. He looks comfortable and content. Soft, and relaxed in a way Newt never is in his own bed. Newt was never really comfortable in the bed before Hermann arrived, alone and on a mattress too soft to feel like anything other than something forbidden. And he didn’t really notice what it felt like last night, other than like something welcoming and warm. He’s glad Hermann gets to appreciate it, at least. Newt doesn’t know if he would be able to, now. He likes seeing Hermann in it, all cozy and propped up on four pillows. Newt smiles a little. 

He’s jerked out of his thoughts by a soft voice saying, “If you’re so desperate to sleep here, then just say so.”

Newt blinks, stares at Hermann. “Oh, no, I— I was just.” Actually, never mind, he’s not going to say _I was just looking at you_. Maybe it was obvious anyway. “I’m not going to kick you out of the bed.”

Hermann makes a quiet sound, like a scoff, his eyes still on his book. “It’s not as if both of us can’t fit.”

Newt blinks a few more times. And then, face warm, he moves to climb into Hermann’s bed with him, in the same spot he slept the night before, because he _does_ want to. He wants to sleep in the bed, and he wants to sleep in the bed with _Hermann_, and not just because Newt’s been in love with him for a really long time. He just wants to not be alone all the time. Also, he was right, the bed is fucking comfortable. 

“The couch was making my back hurt,” he mumbles vaguely, just for posterity’s sake. 

Hermann hums, and leans over to turn out the lamp, plunging them both into darkness. 

Newt sinks into it happily, listens to Hermann breathing and shifting beside him, and feels it all embrace him on every side. It’s not completely without awkwardness, but it’s...it’s so much better than the dark living room and the couch, and Newt revels in it. 

Neither of them has nightmares that night. 

Or for the next two nights, as they share the bed again, and again, without saying anything about it. It just becomes expected, that at the end of the night, Newt will climb into the side of the bed closest the door, and Hermann will already be there, reading in his pajamas, like he’s waiting for Newt. And in the morning, Newt will wake up to Hermann’s soft, sleeping face, or the back of his tousled head, always a little bit closer than they started out, but never touching. It’s so good that it hurts. Newt always slips out before Hermann wakes up. 

It’s the perfect solution, Newt thinks, right up until, on their fourth night of sharing the bed, he can’t fall asleep. 

The success of this arrangement hinges on Newt falling asleep quickly and getting out of bed as soon as he can in the morning, so that he can’t spend too much time overthinking things or stewing in wistful thoughts. If he stays awake too long, or stays in bed too long in the morning, he starts wishing Hermann was closer, or thinking about how it would feel to press up against every bony inch of him. Or he starts getting miserable, knowing how impossible those thoughts are, and how they’ll never happen, and how it’s creepy of him to think them, not to mention kind of shitty, when Hermann has never been anything but clear about his feelings towards Newt. 

It’s not good for him to be in bed with Hermann but not sleeping, is all. 

But on their fourth night, he just can’t seem to drift off. And it’s not even because he’s thinking about Hermann, because for once he’s _not_. It’s because just before they turned in for the night, Hermann told Newt he got an email from Marshal Hansen, asking if and when they planned on coming back to the Shatterdome. And neither Newt or Hermann had known what to say. Neither of them had said much of anything. 

Newt’s still thinking about it now, flat on his back on the mattress, listening to Hermann’s slow, even breaths. Going back to work, and why he feels so much dread at the thought of it. The cold starkness of the Shatterdome, the unwelcoming and unforgiving solitude of his bunk, the lab with the line down the middle. All of his samples, which will, eventually, run out. Never to be replenished. He huffs a sigh. 

And then he nearly jumps out of his skin when Hermann says, “We should be able to see Mars very well in tonight’s sky.”

Newt, who thought Hermann was asleep, takes a moment to calm his pounding heart. When he finally registers what Hermann said, he frowns and whispers, “Huh?”

“Mars should be very visible in tonight’s sky,” Hermann repeats, unbothered. 

For a minute, Newt just tries to figure out what he’s talking about, _why_ he’s telling Newt this, but eventually it occurs to him that they’ve both been lying in bed for an hour now, sleepless. And neither of them are likely to fall asleep anytime soon. And it’s never wise for them to lie awake next to each other all night. 

So Newt smiles a little, and says, “You wanna go look?”

“If you’d like,” Hermann says. 

“Yeah,” Next says. “Let’s go.”

So they slide back out of bed, and Newt pulls on some soft jogging pants, and then they drag a blanket from the living room out to the beach, where they spread it out on the sand and lie down side-by-side, heads cushioned on throw pillows, faces tipped up towards the sky. 

Astronomy was never Newt’s thing—one of the few places his interests _haven’t_ taken him—so he doesn’t actually know which of the pinpricks of light on the black canvas of the sky is Mars, and Hermann doesn’t tell him. But it doesn’t really matter. All he knows is that the sky is huge, so fucking huge, and Newt is so, so small. And it’s comforting, in a way, to feel that small. All his life, Newt just wanted to be bigger, he wanted to be famous, to be a rockstar, to change the world. And he did. But it was scary. It was _too_ big. All that time feeling like the world was relying on him wore on him, and the culmination of it was terrifying. He finally had the attention he wanted for so long, and it was too much. 

Now, Newt wants to be small. Just for now—maybe not forever. But he wants to just—just be Newt. He’s never been able to just be Newt before. 

But right now he feels like it. With the universe stretched out above him, limitless and twinkling. He’s just a tiny, insignificant human, and the world is so big, and he can close his eyes and not matter. 

“It’s big, isn’t it,” Hermann says, and Newt smiles, and wonders if Hermann caught a hint of his thoughts. 

“Yeah.”

“So vast...almost entirely unexplored by humans.”

Newt hums, and tries not to think about the Precursors, about the beings out there that could wipe out Earth’s existence if they wanted to. 

“I wanted to be an astronaut, once.”

Newt blinks, turns his head to glance at Hermann. “Really?”

Hermann hums. “Before Trespasser, of course. I wanted to go out and explore the stars.”

Newt grins. “Decided we had enough problems right here on Earth?”

“Couldn’t pass the physical,” Hermann says, and pats his bad hip gently. 

“Oh.” The grin slides off his face. “That’s too bad. NASA missed out.”

He catches the edge of a smile on Hermann’s lips. “I never believed in aliens, you know. I always thought that if none had visited Earth, it was because they didn’t exist. Not sentient beings, at least.”

Newt snorts. “I always believed in them. I was pretty stoked, you know, when Trespasser showed up.”

“I know,” Hermann says softly. 

The silence stretches on, and Newt starts to feel guilty. “I don’t mean— I mean, I knew it was terrible. I knew it was, you know, tragic and awful—”

“I know, Newton,” Hermann says. “That’s not what I was thinking.”

“Oh,” Newt says awkwardly. 

“When Trespasser landed, I was in shock. I wanted to know everything about these new creatures.” Hermann doesn’t look away from the night sky. “I read all of the papers you published.”

Newt blinks in surprise. “Really?”

Hermann hums. “I almost wrote to you. Back then.”

A slow grin creeps onto Newt’s face. “That would have been cool. I always wanted someone to talk to.”

“I already knew about you,” Hermann confesses. “You were making waves in the scientific community in Berlin. German-born, and all. And a genius.”

Newt feels his face go warm. “That’s— That’s cool. That you knew who I was.”

“I wanted you to know who I was, too,” Hermann says. “I almost wrote to you.”

“I wish you had,” Newt says. He’d never heard the name _Gottlieb_ until Hermann’s dad had started up the Jaeger program, and never thought twice about the young son that coded the Mark 1’s until he started publishing papers on the nature of the Breach. Newt had been...really lonely back then. He would have been better, he thinks, if he had known Hermann. Would have been happier. 

They breathe quietly, together, into the night. Up at the stars, at the universe that they still know so little about. Newt thinks about aliens, and the Precursors, and Trespasser, and the way he felt, then—terrified, grief-stricken, but also exhilarated, to be part of something so big, to be staring into a discovery bigger than any he had ever dreamed of. The Kaiju had always been a daydream and a nightmare all wrapped into one. 

Before he even knows it’s about to come out of his mouth, Newt’s saying, “They’re really gone, huh?”

Hermann hums, not even questioning what he means. “It would appear so.”

“I’m glad, you know?” Newt says, heart beating in his throat, forcing the words out. His hands fidget restlessly with the hem of his shirt. “I’m glad they’re gone, I really am, I— I hope they never come back, I _do_. But.” His breath hitches a little. “They were my entire life. So what do I do now?”

It’s quiet for a moment, and then Hermann says, voice soft and steady, “I know.”

“For twelve fucking years, every single thought I’ve had has been about Kaiju, about stopping them and understanding them and— And now they’re just gone? And they’re not coming back. I don’t _want_ them to come back. But I don’t— I don’t know what to do without them.”

“I know,” Hermann says again. “I— Me too, Newton. I feel that too.”

Newt squeezes his eyes shut, and feels hot tears build behind his eyelids. 

“Both of us, we dedicated ourselves to the Kaiju, not truly expecting to live to see past them,” Hermann says. “And now that we have, somehow, we don’t know what to do with ourselves.”

Newt huffs, and it comes out like a sob. “I don’t want to go back to work.”

“I know,” Hermann says. 

“It just feels stupid. Everything until now was life or death, and now there’s just— Just work, and for what?”

“It feels unimportant,” Hermann agrees. “Compared to what we were doing up to now. After you left, I was...angry. Because there was still work to do. But I felt no motivation to do any of it.” A pause, and then, “Especially not without you there.”

Newt lets out a slow, shaky breath. “What are we working for now?”

“Discovery,” Hermann says, a suggestion rather than a declaration. “Creation. New things. The same things we pursued before Trespasser. Working to learn, rather than to survive.”

“Yeah,” Newt says, and he knows it’s true, and that one day he’ll be excited about it, the way he was excited about it when he was waist-deep in the ocean, just a couple days ago. He knows he will be. But not yet, not right now. “Just, sometimes. I feel like I don’t have the Kaiju, so now I have nothing?”

It’s a childish thing to say, and insensitive, when the Kaiju destroyed so many lives. But he feels it in his chest, deep and throbbing, so he says it, just to get it out. 

And instead of telling Newt he’s wrong, or saying he understands, or anything else that Newt expects, Hermann just says, “But you still have...me.”

It cuts Newt down to the core, because it’s true, and it’s been true for so long—even when Newt had no one else, he always had Hermann, he always had someone to talk to when everything felt like too much, he always had someone there when he felt like everything was lost. And when Newt only had one option, Hermann was there to Drift with him. And when everything ended, and Newt was reeling from the enormity of it, Hermann was there, in Medical with him, with a matching ring of red around his iris. And when Newt had to go, had to get away, Hermann showed up to be there with him, too. He _has_ had Hermann, and still has him. 

But not in the way that Newt has wanted for so long. And it feels greedy, and dirty, wanting more when Hermann already gives him so much. But he feels it as deep as he feels the loss of the Kaiju, right now, raw and painful between his ribs, throbbing behind his heart. He closes his eyes tightly and rasps, “Yeah. Thanks, man.”

Between them, on the blanket, their fingers brush together. Above them, the sky stretches on and on and on. The waves lap at the shore. The moon reflects off the water. Newt’s chest aches. He feels scared and small and big and tired and grateful, so grateful, that he’s alive and he’s here and he’s with Hermann. 

He breathes in deep. It’s enough. It has to be.

~

The next day dawns cold, grey and rainy. A steady kind of rain, a dreary shower type of rain. Newt watches it through the window from the couch, hands curled around a hot mug of coffee, and lets the sound of it drumming against the roof fill his ears. The rain reminds him, a little, of Otachi, of staring out at Hong Kong through a curtain of rain with Hannibal Chau, of his cracked and raindrop-splattered glasses and wet leather jacket. But that was different, that was flashing neon lights and the rent-metal shriek of Kaiju and the crack of lightning over the screaming of terrified civilians. This rain is slow and grey and dull. Grey clouds and grey rain and grey sea. Newt likes this better.

The back window is open to let in the breeze, damp and chilly, and it brings in the sound of the ocean with it, the ebb and flow of waves like breathing. And the smell of rain, of wet sand and wet leaves. And other sounds, too. Familiar sounds. Newt cocks his head to the side. 

It takes him a while to place it. He hasn’t heard the sound in a while. Quick, rhythmic chirping, like crickets, or the click of sticks over fence links, _crick-crick-crick-crick—_

Frogs. There are frogs outside, calling. Newt hasn’t—well, in the city, in the Shatterdome K-Science lab, there are no frogs. But back home, back when Newt was younger, by the pond at the park down the road or in the ditch next to the cottage, there were loads of them. Big, lumpy toads, and spotted leopard frogs. Newt always liked bugs, and he _always_ loved frogs. 

It’s nice, thinking about it. Much nicer than thinking about Hong Kong, or Kaiju. Newt sighs, and rubs one palm up and down the tattoos on his arms. After Otachi, and the Hivemind, and the nightmares, Newt sometimes wishes he could get rid of the tattoos, get rid of the constant reminders, as if the feeling of them inside his head isn’t enough. But they’re good reminders, too. And he still thinks they look cool as fuck. 

But he’s not thinking about that now. He’s thinking about when he was young, five and six and seven, with arms free of ink and instead tattooed with freckles from the sun, rubber boots rain-slick, his hair dripping into his eyes, chasing frogs through wet grass and stony shallows. Laughing and splashing in huge puddles and grabbing their soft, squishy bodies with his too-small hands, always careful not to squeeze them, always ready to beg his dad to let him keep them. Scooping clusters of eggs out of creeks to hatch in his bedroom in a tank with green film on the sides, and watching the tadpoles grow legs and start hopping around. Chasing kids around at school with a frog to make them scream. God, he was obnoxious, wasn’t he. 

But he was happy as hell. Newt remembers that the best. That pure, simple joy.

Newt doesn’t have rubber boots here with him in Florida, and he thinks his Doc Martens will just be worse in the rain, so he just forgoes shoes altogether, pulls a sweater on over top of his sleep shirt and tugs up the hood. He comes back out of the room to see Hermann puttering around the kitchen, chopping celery. Newt hadn’t even noticed him in there before, so focused on the rain and the croaking noises drifting in with the breeze and old, old memories. But Hermann looks up at him now, head tilting to the side, and he doesn’t say anything, but Newt hears the question in it. 

“Hey, Herms, I’m going outside to look for frogs,” Newt tells him, flashing a grin that’s half rueful and half poorly-concealed anticipation. “You want anything? Other than frogs, haha.”

Hermann tips his head to the other side with a soft smile, and Newt is hit with a wave of fondness so powerful it makes Newt feel a little breathless. It feels like watching Hermann wake up in the morning with quiet sniffly noises, and looking up at Hermann when he’s brought Newt a cup of coffee at two in the morning during an all-nighter, and seeing that smile Hermann gives him after a good argument that they’ve just been having for the sake of arguing. It feels like Hermann sitting back on his hands and tipping his face up towards the sun to drink it in, and Newt doesn’t get it, doesn’t know what Hermann did to make him feel like this until he realizes it’s not him, it’s _Hermann_. It’s the Ghost Drift. Newt thinks—but isn’t sure, because the emotion is so familiar—that he’s experiencing neural overflow from Hermann, and what Hermann is feeling is fondness, deep and warm and just a little bit painful in the chest. 

And then the feeling ebbs, and Hermann just says, “Wear a jacket, dear, you’ll catch your death.”

Newt feels kind of confused by the entire thing, by the fondness that he still isn’t positive wasn’t his own, by Hermann’s reaction and by his use of the endearment, which Newt thinks might have been used scathingly but might not have been? He’s just generally confused, so he just nods, and grabs his jacket from the closet to shrug it on over his sweater, and goes outside into the rain, flustered and baffled. 

The rain’s really coming down, not a soft drizzle but also not a downpour, just a solid shower, a second-windshield-wiper-setting rain, a constant thing that beats down on Newt’s hood. He tips his face up into it and feels it wash over his skin, and smiles. 

It’s cold, but not freezing. Newt trundles around to the front garden, sand sticking to his feet, and slaps his bare feet down into the puddles forming on the driveway. It splashes up against his legs gaily, and Newt grins. He holds his hands out, palms up, and feels the rain against them, and listens to the sounds of the frogs. The rain blocks everything out, all his thoughts and worries and uncertainties. There’s just Newt, and the rain, and the frogs sounds, and nothing else matters. 

Newt has felt happy since K-Day, he’s felt happy since the war ended, he’s remembered how to smile like he means it and feel real contentment and elation. But as he runs around the front garden poking around plants and chasing after frogs that fling themselves out of his reach, Newt remembers that simple, pure joy of his childhood, of Before-The-War. He remembers the kind of happiness that comes from deep inside his chest, that doesn’t come from _something_ or _someone_, that just comes from _being_. Not joy just in the relief of being alive, but joy in _living_. 

He laughs, and catches a frog, and strokes its slippery wet skin with his thumbs, the swell of its delicate throat as it croaks, and lets it go again, and then looks for another one. 

Sometimes, happiness is a man and his frogs, and that’s all it has to be. 

He trudges inside after a good hour out in the rain, soaked to the bone and shivering, and Hermann is there waiting for him, holding out a huge, soft bath towel for him. Newt grins, and strips off his sopping wet jacket and sweater and t-shirt, rubs the towel over his dripping hair, and peeks out at Hermann, who is leaning on his cane and looking at him with his crooked, froggish smile. Newt laughs at the thought, at Hermann’s froggish face and his long, froggish legs, and Hermann smiles, unknowingly, in response. Something light bubbles up in Newt’s chest, and Hermann asks, “Did you catch any frogs?” and Newt says, “I did, it was great, sorry I didn’t bring any back for you,” and Hermann just smiles and shakes his head and Newt thinks it’s the happiest he’s been in his entire life. 

He changes into dry boxers after that, and a dry t-shirt, and wraps himself in a soft throw blanket to sit on the couch, where Hermann brings him a bowl of vegetable soup that he made while Newt was out catching frogs. And it tastes kind of like the kind Newt’s uncle used to make when Newt was sick, and Hermann sits next to Newt to watch TV with him while he eats and warms up, and Newt just sighs and says, “I feel good.”

Hermann hums, shoulders relaxed and breaths deep and even. “I’m glad.”

“I just feel _good_,” Newt says. “I’m glad I feel good.”

“You deserve to feel good,” Hermann tells him, like it’s a simple truth. 

Newt’s eyes burn a little. “Do you?” he asks. “Feel good?”

“Yes,” Hermann says. “Yes.”

“Good,” Newt says, and eats more of his soup. “That’s what we deserve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frog scene inspired by [this wonderful text post](https://gothszler.tumblr.com/post/179496330332/newt-hey-babe-im-gonna-go-run-around-in-the-rain) which I have been thinking about for like a month.


	5. Chapter 5

Newt never really expected the nightmares to just disappear after he started sharing a bed with Hermann, as if they began in protest of their separation, but they did, for a while. Night after night of blissful, undisturbed sleep. Newt didn’t know it was possible to feel that relaxed. 

But they come back, of course, when he least expects them, and the worst thing about having a few good days is that another bad day hits twice as hard. Or a bad night, as it is. 

Newt jerks awake from the nightmare in the hazy grey pre-dawn hours, breathing hard but already rapidly losing the thread of the dream. Dread builds in his stomach as it sinks in, the fact that he’s here again, feeling that same bone-deep fear, that it might never, never leave him. That he might always wake up every few nights sick to his stomach with terror, wondering when, one day, it’ll be real. 

He doesn’t even know what it was about, and somehow, that makes it worse rather than better, the not knowing. He doesn’t even know what he’s scared of, just that there is a shaking anxiety anchored in his gut and throbbing at the back of his head, dark as the stormy ocean at night and as unknowable as its depths. And Newt had thought he was getting over the ocean thing. 

And then there’s a touch on his back, between his shoulder blades, warm through the thin fabric of his threadbare shirt. Newt tenses up, heart pounding against his ribs, but the touch just trails down his spine, soft and steady. He hears Hermann shift behind him, his breaths slow, even, grounding. 

“Hush,” Hermann says, even though Newt didn’t say anything. “It’s alright.”

A shuddering breath forces its way out of Newt’s lungs. 

“It’s alright,” Hermann repeats, and his fingertips stroke up and down Newt’s spine, which is distracting in a way that Hermann probably doesn’t intend it to be. But still, Newt gladly focuses on that rather than the shivering fear still creeping through his veins, focuses on the almost-ticklish pressure of Hermann’s fingers across his back, the way it makes Newt’s toes curl and his breath hitch. 

“You too?” Newt chokes out, because he wants to know, he wants to know if Hermann has to suffer like this, too, alongside him. 

Hermann hums. “Some of it,” he says softly. “Your dream, so I didn’t get the brunt of it.”

“Do you always get them?” Newt asks, staring unseeingly at the wall in front of him. Hermann’s fingers are still moving, now stroking across his lower back. 

“I wouldn’t know,” Hermann says. “But often enough. You get mine, too—I don’t think you always remember afterwards.”

“Oh,” Newt says with a frown.

“It’s alright,” Hermann says again, sounding sleepy and comforting, so different from Hermann-During-The-War. “They’ll fade.”

Newt hopes so. 

It’s not fading now, though, or at least not enough for Newt to fall back asleep without the fear of having another one, and Hermann’s gentle touch on his back is becoming increasingly difficult to not react to, so Newt clears his throat and says, “I think I’m gonna get up. Sorry for waking you up.”

“No need to apologize,” Hermann says, and sits up as Newt rolls out of bed to scramble to his feet. “I’ll get up, too.”

“You don’t have to,” Newt says quickly, pulling the hem of his shirt down over his crotch as he looks for his glasses. 

“I won’t be able to fall back asleep, either,” Hermann says, and for a second, Newt thinks he means, _without you_. But that’s stupid. 

So they get up, and it’s too early to make breakfast, something like five in the morning, so they sit down on the couch instead, turn on the TV and watch early-morning cooking show reruns. Newt doesn’t really care for them either way, but Hermann, who has taken to cooking like a fish to jumping through hoops—that is, he’s working at it doggedly despite it not coming to him naturally—appears to be taking fastidious mental notes. Newt sits back against the soft couch which used to be his bed and lets his eyes drift shut, not falling asleep but dozing, maybe, in the growing light of dawn and the warmth of Hermann’s knee pressing against his. 

He jerks back into full wakefulness when he feels a hand settle on his knee, and his eyes flutter open to see Hermann still sitting next to him, only now his hand is on Newt’s leg, and Newt has no idea why. He’s just—he’s just sitting there, watching TV, and he’s close to Newt but not pressed up against him, and his hand is on Newt’s knee, the other dangling in his own lap. Newt blinks a few times, a little warm under the collar. 

Hermann squeezes his knee, just lightly, and then presses each of his fingertips into the fabric of Newt’s jogging pants, one after the other—thumb, index, middle, ring, pinky, and then starting again at thumb. Rhythmic and thoughtless. Newt is hyperaware of it, confused and immediately obsessed. 

He thinks—_assumes_—that it’ll stop there, that if Newt stays very still then Hermann won’t realize what he’s doing until he eventually just retracts his hand, but instead, the thumb starts rubbing back and forth against Newt’s pants, sending shivers through Newt’s leg and into his stomach. He twists his own hands together and stops breathing. But rather than yanking his hand back when he becomes conscious of his actions, Hermann starts moving the hand back and forth along the top of Newt’s thigh, a vaguely elliptical motion, and every time it inches up Newt’s leg in the direction of his crotch, where something has been happening since they were still in bed, Newt nearly has a heart attack. 

It becomes clear, eventually, that Hermann _must_ be aware of what he’s doing. He can’t possibly be _that_ absorbed in his cooking show. Which leaves Newt wondering, desperately, _why_ he’s doing it. Is he still tying to comfort Newt? Is he mistaking the tension in his limbs as lingering nightmare-fuelled fear, and hoping to relieve it, somehow, by doing this? Or is he— Is he trying to comfort _himself_, maybe? Maybe _Hermann_ is the one whose fears are still lingering, and Newt is doing absolutely nothing to help, so Hermann has taken matters, quite literally, into his own hands?

Newt feels like this theory has been confirmed when Hermann shifts, just slightly, towards him, so that their legs are pressed together more fully. Seeking contact. Wanting to feel the solid tangibility of Newt against him. That makes sense. 

But then that thought flies out the window, along with every other thought in Newt’s brain, as Hermann settles his hand against Newt’s inseam and trails his fingertips so far up that Newt only narrowly avoids an honest-to-god aneurysm. 

_Holy shit_, he wants to say, suppressing shudders and other unfortunate bodily reactions as best as he can. His stomach has dropped through the floor; there’s something very dangerous happening between his legs. _Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit._

He doesn’t know what’s going on, except that he thinks maybe he _does_, and he doesn’t know how to handle it. He doesn’t— He _knows_ where he and Hermann stand. He _knows_. He would have noticed if anything had changed, and nothing has. Well, a hundred things have changed. But not that. 

Hermann’s thumb strokes across the inside of his thigh, six inches from disaster, and Newt makes a sound against his will. _Shit_. 

“Hermann,” he forces himself to say, his voice coming out thready and high. “Dude, you gotta take it easy on me. I can’t do this.”

Immediately, Hermann jerks back as if burned, and when Newt glances at him his face is bright red. For a second, Newt thinks maybe he was right the first time—that Hermann hadn’t noticed what he was doing—but then Hermann says, “I’m— I’m so sorry, I thought you—”

Newt swallows thickly as Hermann trails off, embarrassed and sick to his stomach. _I do_, he wants to say, _I do, I do, but not like this._ “Yeah, look, Herms.” He clears his throat, stares blankly at the TV. “I know I come across as, like, a casual dude who’ll just make do with the closest body but. With you—”

“You don’t want that,” Hermann says, flushing and moving farther away on the couch. Every inch seems to pull at Newt’s stomach, like it’s caught on a hook. “With me.”

“I really, _really_ can’t,” Newt says hoarsely, even though it kills him. “I’m just, it’s too much—”

“No, of course, I understand,” Hermann says quickly. “I’m sorry. I...misunderstood.”

“It’s okay,” Newt says, feeling pretty much anything _but_ okay. He hates…_hates_ knowing that Hermann still knows, that Hermann can tell Newt’s still into him, that Newt wants him every single fucking day. And he hates that Hermann thought he would be into _this_, something…casual. Just because they’re both here and they want comfort and. Whatever. God, shit, _fuck_. He’s not mad at Hermann, it’s not his fault, he didn’t _know_, he doesn’t think Hermann just assumed he was desperate or that Hermann would try to take advantage of him or whatever. He just didn’t _know_. He didn’t know it was this deep for Newt. He doesn’t know that he’s _it_ for Newt. 

It’s fine. It’s fine. He...he asked, kind of, and Newt said no, and. Now everything’s fine, everything is...clear. Newt can’t. Not with him. It’s too much. He breathes out shakily. 

The silence between them is unbearable. Newt wonders if now, at this exact second, would be a good time to return to Hong Kong. The space between them on the couch feels about as big as the Pacific. 

He swallows again, and says, because he has to, “We’re still friends, right?” Because he has to, because they _have to be_. Because if they weren’t, Newt doesn’t know what he’d do. 

“Yes, Newton, of course,” Hermann says, no hesitation. 

But it’s strained. It’s _agony._

Newt closes his eyes and tries to convince himself this was the best option.

~

Newt gets the hell out of Dodge.

As tempted as he is to fly all the way back to Hong Kong as soon as humanly possible, he knows this is probably an overreaction and will not actually help him in the long run. But he _does_ get out of the house as soon as he's eaten some breakfast (as soon as he can escape without it being glaringly obvious that he's running away) and walks to town, because it's the only way he can avoid looking at Hermann and feeling the most horrifying mixture of embarrassment, regret, and longing known to man.

He's still feeling it, even walking down the streets of the little Florida village that's beginning to feel like home in the early morning sun, but at least he doesn't have to feel it where Hermann can see. He hides in the little cafe where Hermann likes to look at the pastry selection for twenty minutes before choosing a pecan tart every single time, and chats absentmindedly with the talkative middle-aged café owner, who doesn't seem to notice that Newt would rather stew in his misery than talk about the weather. He does, of course, notice that Hermann isn't with him today, and asks where his "young man is on this lovely morning."

"He's not mine," Newt replies with a humourless smile.

The owner frowns and hums. "Are you sure?"

"Extremely," Newt says, and starts picking up his things to go be miserable somewhere else.

He spends the whole day out, drifting from bookstore to restaurant to pier, anything to keep him occupied. And the saddest part is that right away he misses eating Hermann's mediocre home-cooked meals, and Hermann grumbling about the sand in his shoes, and Hermann nagging him to put on sunblock. It's been less than twelve hours, and Newt already misses him, and not only that, but he misses the _annoying_ things about him. Hermann's cantankerousness and deep love of complaining. It's stupid and it makes Newt cranky.

But eventually he has to go back, as much as he doesn't want to. There's a brief moment where he considers driving to the airport, and then entertains the thought of getting a hotel room for the night, but it's all a little _too_ obvious for him. Not that Hermann won't know, of course, why he left for the entire day, but it's just sad if he's that transparent. He could at least _pretend_ he's not so embarrassed that he can never look Hermann in the eye again.

So he goes back—goes home—as dusk falls over southern Florida. The evening is quiet, and there are crickets chirping, and Newt can see the kitchen light on as he approaches from the street. He takes a deep breath, opens the door.

An incredible smell wafts out of the house, sweet and sugary and warm. Newt blinks and steps inside.

Hermann is in the kitchen, peeking into the oven. He lets the door slam shut as he stands to look at Newt, one hand white-knuckled around the handle of his cane. "Ah," he says, cheeks pink from the heat of the stove. "You're back."

Newt averts his eyes and nods. "Um, yeah."

"I made...snickerdoodles." 

Somehow, something about Hermann saying that word makes Newt want to laugh, just because it's so at odds with the Hermann Newt has known for five years. But all he manages is a smile and a very weak chuckle. "Cool," he says, closing the door behind him quietly, because the silence between them feels oddly fragile.

"I burned the first batch," Hermann says. Newt could have guessed—now that he's inside, he can smell the smoky scent of burnt sugar.

"Pity," is all Newt can think to say. He glances at Hermann, and then quickly away. There's flour smudged on his cheek. "Look, uh—"

"I apologize, again, for earlier," Hermann says quickly, cutting him off. "It was— I didn't mean to—"

Newt shakes his head fervently, desperate for him to stop talking. "No, it's. Don't worry about it. I mean it." And then, "I just wanted to know, um. If you need me to sleep on the couch again. Tonight."

"No," Hermann says immediately, as if he's in a rush to say it, as if he, too, can't stand even a second of silence. "No, of course not. We— I mean, if you need _me_ to sleep on the couch, I can certainly—"

"No, no." God, Newt just needs them to be done talking. "No. That's...not fair. We can share. It's fine."

He can feel Hermann looking at him, but doesn't lift his eyes from the floor. "Alright," Hermann says. "If you're sure."

"Course," Newt says, even though he's not. "I'm just gonna go...brush my teeth."

"Oh," says Hermann. "Are you not going to have a snickerdoodle?"

Newt can't refuse. He shuffles over, looks up at Hermann only long enough to receive a still-warm cookie, spread a little too thin and falling apart in his hands. He gets crumbs all over the floor, leaning up against the counter as he eats, but what he manages to get into his mouth is delicious. "S'good," Newt says, cracking a smile. "You're turning into a real chef there, Herms."

"Yes, well. I find it...relaxing." His tone is stiff, as if Newt being this close to him is uncomfortable.

"Should have known you'd be a stress baker," Newt says, and makes another attempt at a grin. Maybe he shouldn't have acknowledged the stress part of this terrible day, but he figures they're a little past pretending it doesn't exist.

He catches the edge of a smile in response. "Should have spent more time in the kitchens during the war, perhaps," Hermann says quietly.

"You're welcome to cook something up over on my side of the lab," Newt tells him. "Crack cocaine, maybe. Get us a little extra funding, if you know what I mean."

Hermann lets out an inelegant snort. "Yes, I think becoming a drug dealer would be an excellent way to de-stress."

"Hermann, Hermann, I never said _dealer_. You'd just be the chemist."

It's a dumb joke, but it's worth it to ease the tension in the room even a fraction. And it's nice, to talk about the future like this, as if they'll be together. Because they _will_. Despite what happened this morning. That won't change. Newt needed to know that.

It's easier, after that, to get ready for the night and slip into their shared bed, something Newt had been dreading all day. It's easier, knowing that Hermann believes things will be able to return to normal, someday, even if it won't be right away.

It does not make it easier to wake up to Hermann's sleeping face nine hours later, so close to Newt's, bathed in watery morning sunlight. It does _not_ make it easier to wake up with Hermann's knees nudged up against Newt's under the blankets, and his pinky overlapping Newt's on the mattress between them.

Newt closes his eyes again, and tries not to think about it. It could be worse, he tells himself. They could have woken up tangled up in each other's arms, or spooning, or something else horrifically embarrassing. He could have woken up with his morning wood pressed up against Hermann's flat ass. It could be _worse_. At least like this, Newt could escape if he needed to.

He does need to, but he doesn't. It's quiet, and early, and Newt is sleepy and warm. And somehow, despite everything, he's still enjoying Hermann's pinky curled around his own. It's simple, and sweet, and affectionate. Newt can pretend he means it, unconsciously, even if it's not in the way Newt wants him to. Newt can pretend it means Hermann doesn't want to never be near him again.

He breathes sleepily into the morning air, and thinks about Hermann's long, bony fingers, and his equally bony wrists. Hermann always kept his shirts buttoned up at the cuffs, like a boring university professor, and Newt used to covet glimpses of his wrists, like a Victorian schoolboy catching sight of a pretty girl's ankles. But he's seen lots of Hermann's wrists on this trip, _and_ his ankles, and his knees, and every other bony, knobbly part of him. It's been nice, if not horribly tempting. Hermann's body type is so different from Newt's. While Newt got a little round around the middle from only eating garbage in the Shatterdome, Hermann stayed rail-thin, lost weight if anything, all concave and sickly-looking. He's filled out a little in the past few weeks, but he's still a skinny motherfucker, and all of his bones show.

Sometimes, Newt thinks about kissing them. Only in his weakest moments. He thinks about kissing the knob of his wrist, the pointy jut of his shoulder, each vertebrae along his spine. The domes of his knees and prominent bones of his ankles. It's a dangerous thought to have—a little creepy, maybe—and it's dumb for Newt to think about it right now, after everything. But he's so warm. And he's sad, and pathetic, and tired. And it's such a well-worn fantasy that Newt doesn't even really have to think about it. Just imagines, vaguely, the feeling of his lips sliding over warm, delicate skin. The tip of his tongue over each bone as he names it. Hermann's long, lax body, pliant against his own.

He lets his mind drift with it—or rather, the thought wraps around his brain and drags it back into unconsciousness against Newt’s will. He doesn’t even realize it’s happening, really. Isn’t aware of the moment he drifts back to sleep, or the moment he loses conscious control over his idle fantasy. Just sighs contentedly into thoughts of lazy morning makeouts, and soft lips on warm skin, and hands roaming over his body, or maybe Hermann’s, he can’t really tell. In any case, it’s nice, while it lasts. 

And then for the second time in as many days, Newt jerks awake from a dream in the space of an instant, only today's dream is vastly different, and infinitely worse. He wrenches his eyes open to see Hermann's face still directly in front of his, and can still see the image of him pressed up against Newt's body as if burned into the backs of Newt's eyelids—can still hear the soft murmurs of his name in Hermann's low, hoarse voice. And from the shocked look on Hermann's face, so can he.

Oh, shit.

_Shit._

~

"Shit," Newt says, sitting bolt upright, blood running ice-cold.

And then, to his utter confusion, Hermann props himself up on one elbow, opens his mouth and says, "Newton, I— I'm so sorry."

Newt gapes at him, jaw working. He feels dizzy—he sat up too quickly. "I— _What?_"

Hermann is trembling. Underneath his own terror, Newt is baffled. "I'm so sorry, I, I didn't mean to—"

"You didn't mean to what?" Newt says, scraping a shaking hand through his wild hair. Hermann is vaguely blurry—Newt reaches out and finds his glasses.

"I'm _sorry_," Hermann says again, like it's all he knows how to say. His face is pale.

Newt is starting to feel a little hysterical. "Why are you apologizing? It's _my_ fucking recurring dream."

Hermann blinks huge brown eyes. Now he's the one gaping. "_Yours?_"

"I— Yes?" Newt feels like this doesn't need to be said. "_Obviously?_"

Hermann's brow furrows. He shifts uncomfortably—at the back of his mind Newt knows being twisted like that to look up at him must be murder on Hermann's hip. "But you just said yesterday—that—with me—you couldn't."

Newt winces, feeling it like a blow to his stomach. "Yeah, exactly, because I've been daydreaming about it for five years?"

Hermann stares at him, and Newt flushes hotly, even though Hermann _knew_. He obviously knew. Unless he really did think that Newt had lost interest somewhere in the interim and thought he had just become _re_-interested again recently, which is perhaps less pathetic—

"But— Why would wanting it make you not allowed to have it?" Hermann asks, obviously feeling very lost.

Newt thinks he must either be an idiot or still half asleep. "Because you said no!"

Hermann stares at him. "_You_ said no. You said to me— You said you can't."

"No, not that, you—" Newt makes a frustrated noise. "Four fucking years ago! Hermann, I swear to god, if you tell me you _forgot_— But I know you didn’t, because I saw it in our fucking Drift! I asked you out _four years ago_ and you fucking said _no_. Like, a very firm, resounding no, and you _never took it back_, and—"

"I thought you were joking!"

Newt snaps his mouth shut. He blinks once. "You _what?_"

"My god, Newton, I." Hermann's throat bobs, and he sits up a little more, against the headboard. "Of course I still remember. But you were. Obnoxious, and always mocking me, I thought you were _joking_, of course I said _no_."

"Oh my fucking god." Newt's head is spinning. "I—! I was serious! I wanted to date you!"

Hermann inhales a little too sharply. "Four years ago?"

"_Still_," Newt says, with feeling. "Oh my _god._"

Hermann seems to share the sentiment. "Then why did you say no? Yesterday?"

Newt tugs at his hair wildly. "Because I thought you weren't into me like that! I'm not gonna have a weird friends with benefits _thing_ with my best friend that I'm in love with!"

"I—" For several long, agonizing moments, Hermann is perfectly silent. Newt's heart shakes in his chest in a way that feels medically dangerous. His ears are ringing. Hermann's throat bobs again. "You're in love with me?"

Newt laughs, sharp and overwhelmed. "_Yes_. I thought we had _established that._"

"Newton," Hermann says, his voice becoming urgent. "_Newton. I'm_ in love with _you_."

Newt is back to gaping. This time, he doesn't stop. His mind has ground to a halt, at the same time that it's flying out in every direction. His eyes start to burn. "You— What?"

Hermann huffs, cheeks pink and eyes wide. "I'm—"

Newt cuts him off, before he can somehow change what he said. "Since _when_, you fucker?"

Now, Hermann is beginning to smile. It's so nice. Newt likes his smile so much. "For years," he says, voice softer now, and less edged with panic.

"No," Newt says, and then changes it to, "Oh my god?" because the _no_ makes Hermann look sad. He swallows hard. "Oh my _god?_"

Hermann nods, and Newt isn't sure if he's agreeing or still confirming that he meant what he said. Newt hopes it's both.

"Are we idiots?" Newt asks, knowing the answer.

Hermann replies anyway. "Yes, it would appear so."

"Holy _shit_." Newt tries, desperately, to wrap his head around this. _Hermann_. Being in _love with him_. It's— It's incredible. It's unbelievable. It doesn't make sense but it kind of does but Newt can't believe it just because he's spent _so much goddamn time being miserable about it._ And for no fucking reason. _God._ "Hermann, what the _fuck_."

Hermann laughs softly. Newt is not in the mood to laugh. He's pissed as hell. He has spent _four years_ just _pining—_

"We could have been making out for _years_," Newt says, appalled.

"Yes," Hermann says, now absolutely beaming. Newt wants to punch him. And also kiss the everloving _fuck_ out of him.

"Why aren't we making out right now?" Newt demands.

Hermann's voice is awed and breathy when he says, "I don't know."

The moment between Newt leaning in and their mouths making contact are full of shivery, terrifying anticipation. For four years (and then some), Newt has been thinking about this. Newt has thought about this maybe every single day, in between Kaiju attacks and screaming matches and sleepless nights. And now it's _happening_ and it feels...unreal, and _too_ real, and scary as hell. But also Newt feels like he'll die without it.

Their lips touch. Newt feels it like an electric shock to the core of his being.

It's clumsy, and awkward, and they're at a weird angle, and Newt presses their mouths together too hard, so it hurts. It is, by all accounts, not a good kiss. But it's a _kiss_, and Newt has dreamed about it a thousand times, and now it's happening. His eyes are definitely burning. He exhales, tips his head to the side, kisses Hermann again. Someone makes a noise. Newt thinks it's probably him.

"Holy shit," he breathes into it, feeling Hermann's chapped lips against his own, ignoring everyone's morning breath. "Holy _shit_."

"Shut up," Hermann murmurs, and catches Newt's lower lip gently with his teeth.

Newt whines high in his throat. He does not shut up. "Why didn't you ever _say anything?_"

Hermann scoffs, and his hands move to Newt's jaw. It feels amazing, somehow. _God_, he's wanted Hermann to touch him for so long. "Because you were my best friend," he says softly. "And I didn't know—"

"I do," Newt says, even though he's not totally sure Hermann was going to say _I didn't know if you felt the same way_. It doesn't matter. He does. "I do. I'm _fucking_ in love with you."

Hermann is smiling into their next kiss; Newt kind of kisses his teeth. "I— Me too—"

"Shut up, shut up." Newt moves closer on his knees, curls over Hermann where he's propped against the headboard to kiss him harder. He slides his hands around Hermann's neck, combs his fingertips into the short hair at his nape, pulls Hermann up a little into each fervent kiss. Hermann's mouth is soft and warm and pliant, and Newt cannot get enough of it. He sucks on Hermann's lip, just a bit, and Hermann makes a low sound so addicting that Newt slides his tongue into his mouth on instinct alone.

Hermann makes another sound, louder this time, and sucks on Newt's tongue quickly before pulling away and saying, "Newton, really, your mouth is disgusting—"

Newt, who is busy losing his mind, just says, "Dude, shut up, I swear to god—" and kisses him again, to no complaint.

He'd meant to just kiss Hermann a little, just enough to sate his overwhelming need to do so and then pull away to talk, because he's pretty sure there's still things they need to talk about. But he's becoming increasingly less certain, and increasingly _more_ certain that if he stops kissing Hermann, he'll actually die. He won't live to see another day if he doesn't get his tongue back into Hermann's mouth. And it's not even _good_, neither of them are even good at kissing, there hasn't exactly been any fucking time to _practice_, but Newt is so hooked on it it's worrying. Every time either of them pulls back even an inch, even just to breathe, something reels Newt back in like an invisible force, pulling his mouth back against Hermann's. It's fucking incredible.

"Shit," Newt says against Hermann's lips, because nothing will ever stop him from running his fucking mouth. "Hermann, I'm serious, I'm _so—_"

"Mmm," Hermann says, pulling Newt's hands down from his neck to his waist, under the hem of his shirt.

Newt whines and pushes his hands up Hermann's skinny torso, running his palms over warm skin. He rubs his thumbs over both nipples, and Hermann arches up sharply, and Newt think he feels it through the Ghost Drift, the spike of pleasure, and it makes him whimper. "Hermann," he whimpers, climbing into his lap and squirming. "_Touch me._"

Hermann huffs a laugh and obligingly slides his hands under _Newt's_ shirt, rubs his thumbs over _Newt's_ nipples, and Newt makes a strangled sound so embarrassing that he decides to just forget it ever happened. Newt breathes hard for a second, shivering, and then pushes his hands up over Hermann's shoulders and breaks away from Hermann's mouth, remembering his dream. Fantasy? Whatever. He swallows, and trails sticky kisses down the side of Hermann's neck, pulling at the stretched collar of Hermann's sleep shirt to kiss down and across to the bony knob of his shoulder.

Newt hums as he lets his lips linger there. "Always wanted to kiss you here," he says dazedly.

A soft laugh vibrates through Hermann's chest. "On my shoulder?"

"Bony," Newt says. "All over."

"What?"

Newt pulls Hermann's hand out of his shirt to kiss the point of his wrist, and the bumps of his knuckles. With his other hand, Hermann glides the tip of his thumb around Newt's nipple again, and Newt keens and nips at Hermann's knobby first finger in retaliation.

"What are you doing?" Hermann asks mildly, sounding blissed-out and amused.

"Just you wait until I get my mouth on every single vertebrae in your spine," Newt tells him, feeling a little drunk on this.

"You are disturbed," Hermann murmurs, and then hooks his finger under Newt's chin to pull him back to Hermann's face, and kisses Newt's cheek, just next to his nose. "I love your freckles here," he says.

Newt grins stupidly. "They're cute, right?"

"Bewitching," Hermann hums.

Newt feels kind of like he's going to cry with happiness.

"I'm just, I really can't believe this is happening," Newt says with a babyish sniff, some indeterminate time and number of indulgent kisses later. "I had _seriously_ given up hope, I'm not kidding."

"I'm sorry," Hermann says, soft and regretful and still kissing behind Newt's ear, his hands plastered to the curve of Newt's ass.

Newt shakes his head. "It was— Both of us were dumb. For geniuses, we're _really_ fucking dumb."

"We were also rather preoccupied," Hermann says. "What with saving the world and all."

"Still had plenty of time to pine," Newt grumbles, and holds onto Hermann's tiny waist like he'll drift away if he lets go.

"Might be better this way," Hermann tells him. "Now we'll actually have time to...focus on this."

Newt thinks about that idly, while he attaches his mouth to Hermann's neck to give him a truly inspiring hickey. "Do you think we'll go back?" he pulls back to ask, licking the patch of skin just to make Hermann make a disgruntled sound. "To Hong Kong? Now?"

Hermann squeezes his ass in a poor imitation of retaliation. "Eventually," he says. "I feel...almost ready."

"Yeah," Newt says. "Me too. Almost."

"Not quite yet," Hermann says. "We've just gotten here."

_Here_ meaning _attached at the mouth_, presumably. Newt agrees wholeheartedly.

"I can't believe we could have been making out for _four years_," Newt says.

Hermann grins and kisses him quiet.

~

It's hard, leaving the cottage.

Newt doesn't want to go. It feels like home, after three weeks here. And even more than that, it's the only place Newt has felt peace in _years_. He feels _good_ here. He doesn't want that to end.

But it has to, and he's ready for it to, he thinks. He doesn't dread the idea of going back to work anymore—not with Hermann going with him. And he knows they need him, back in Hong Kong. He has work to do, _important_ work. He's been getting increasingly desperate emails from Marshal Hansen, and he feels it in his heart, besides. That there are things he has to do. Discoveries he has to make. He's excited.

But he's still not in any rush to go, and Hermann is right there with him, standing on the front drive with their luggage, staring up at the cottage they've called home for the better part of a month. Newt sighs and gets out his phone to take a picture. And then he turns and holds his phone out in front of him, and tugs Hermann against his side, and takes a selfie—him, beaming for the camera, and Hermann, looking disgruntled. He loves it.

"When we retire, let's move to the beach," he says.

Hermann scoffs. "Honestly, Newton, while I understand the sentiment, I think I've about had it with oceans."

Newt laughs out loud. "Okay. Maybe a lake? There are plenty of lakes out there."

"Maybe a lake." Hermann squeezes his hand. "Planning on retiring anytime soon?"

Newt shakes his head. "Not too soon. Lots to do."

"Yes. I agree."

The flight back to Hong Kong is hellish. A million hours long, and every single one of them is agonizingly boring. But Hermann is there, right next to him. Squeezing the top of Newt's thigh, and holding his hand between their seats, and kissing him once, when the entire plane is dark and everyone is trying to sleep and Newt is chilly and so tired he could scream. One little kiss, chaste as a third-grader, but it bolsters Newt's mood enough to get him through the last five hours of the flight. He's that gone on him.

They arrive at the Shatterdome at ten in the morning, unsure what day it is and not really caring. They don't hold hands walking into the building, but only because their hands are full with their luggage and Hermann’s cane.

Marshal Hansen is there to greet them. "Gentlemen," he says, nodding vaguely. "It's good to see you both back in one piece."

Newt grins. "Alive and well, sir."

"You enjoyed your vacation, I assume? Considering you were too busy to answer any of my emails."

"It was lovely," Hermann says, somewhat stiffly.

Newt rolls his eyes. Hermann is terrible in the face of authority figures. "Yeah, it was great. I would highly recommend it. For everyone. Including you."

He says it jokingly, but he means it. He thinks everyone in the 'Dome could use a break, pretty desperately really. Especially Herc Hansen.

"I'll keep that in mind," the Marshal says dryly.

"I hope you do," Newt tells him. "Maybe not by the beach, though. It's kind of lost its shine."

Marshal Hansen cracks a tiny smile, looking like he hasn't done so in a long time. "Thanks for the tip."

"And sir?" Newt says, as Hermann begins to bump him in the direction of their rooms. "It's good to be back."

Marshal Hansen's smile grows, just by a fraction. "That's good to hear, Dr. Geiszler."

They only make it to Hermann's room, which is the closer of the two by about twenty feet. There, Newt drops his luggage, pulls Hermann in by the front of his jacket, and kisses him soundly, just because he can, and because he hasn't been able to for the past twenty hours. Hermann didn't let Newt drag him into a bathroom stall at the airport.

Hermann makes a muffled noise, but makes no move to push him away. "Missed me, I see?" he says against Newt's mouth.

"Horribly," Newt says, and bites at his lips. He pushes at Hermann's coat and says, "I'm going to miss you in shorts and t-shirts."

"I can't even _wear_ shorts in the lab," Hermann says, rolling his eyes.

"I know, but I'll still miss it. You looked so fucking cute." Newt loves being able to say that, now. He kisses Hermann happily, starting to feel woozy with exhaustion. "Now I'll never get to see it again for a million years, except in the pictures I took."

Hermann hums, kisses him softly. "Perhaps we'll just have to make it a habit. Vacationing in warm places, I mean."

Newt blinks, and then grins. "Oh my god, _yes_. Hermann, you're a fucking genius."

Hermann smiles lopsidedly. "Your freckles will fade. I can't bear the thought of it."

"You fucking sap," Newt says, and sighs, wrapping his arms around Hermann's waist. "I can't wait."

They make it to the lab, eventually. Newt would love nothing more than to collapse on his bed, or maybe Hermann's bed, and pass out for the next ten hours or so, but it's the middle of the day and they have things to do. So they go to the lab, and they look at the things they left behind, and the things people have changed and started working on in their absence. They're not the only K-Scientists employed by the PPDC anymore. Things will be changing.

Hermann looks thoughtfully down at the line bisecting their workspace. "Do you think we should remove it?" he says. "As a...symbolic gesture."

Newt snorts. "God, no. I'd start leaving Kaiju guts on your side again, and you'd go ballistic."

Hermann hums. "That's true. You're still as disgusting as ever."

"You know it," Newt says, and slaps his ass just to get the point across.

Hermann lets out a huge, long-suffering sigh, which Newt enjoys a lot more now that he knows Hermann daydreams about kissing all his freckles in constellation patterns.

"I suppose we might even get separate labs, at some point," Hermann says.

"Oh." Newt frowns at that. "You think so?"

"It would make sense," Hermann says. "If we get more space. We're not even in the same discipline."

Newt makes a face. "Who'll yell at me for doing dumb shit, though?"

Hermann smiles. "Who, indeed."

Newt sighs, and leans against Hermann, who leans more heavily on his cane. They look around the lab together. Some of their things have already been cleared out, to a separate lab, where the new K-Scientists are working in the interim. Equipment that they needed to run tests, and samples they wanted to run tests _on_. Newt missed things. He finds that he's actually disappointed—that he doesn't want to miss anything.

He sniffs. "Well," he says. "Once more unto the breach, and all that."

Hermann makes a noise. "I don't care for that phrase anymore."

"Yeah," Newt says, and laughs. "Once more unto the, uh, scientific world of discovery."

"Discovery," Hermann agrees, and wraps his hand around Newt's.

They step forward together.


End file.
